From 1954 to 1981, Dublin born writer Maeve Brennan wrote for The New Yorker's Talk of the Town column under the pen name The Long-Winded Lady… During that time, in 1969, a collection of 47 of those pieces was published, each using that pen name as a title.
Maeve Brennan’s funny, steely - and often sad - sketches of New York life were enormously popular, and also critically admired. She cut a smart and stylish dash at the New Yorker, where she became a staff writer. And there are some who believe that she was the inspiration for Truman Capote’s most enduring fictional character, Holly Golightly from Breakfast at Tiffany’s.
Maeve Brennan was born in Dublin and spent her early childhood on picturesque Cherryfield Avenue in Ranelagh, a location that remained spiritually crucial in her writing life. Her father was a diplomat and Maeve moved to the United States when she was 17 years old, first to Washington and then to New York. Nonetheless, the imaginative landscape of her hometown never left her, though it was the city of New York which fired and fuelled her creativity.
A new edition collecting her The Long-Winded Lady is being published by Peninsula Press, with an intro by author Sinéad Gleeson. For RTÉ Arena, Sinead joined Sean Rocks on the line - listen above.
Listen to more from RTÉ Arena here.
