38 20th century Irish writers

Jane Barlow was an Irish writer, noted for her novels and poems describing the lives of the Irish peasantry, chiefly about Lisconnel and Ballyhoy, in relation to both landlords and the Great Famine.

Mary Beckett (1926–2013) was an Irish author.

Mariella Norma Borthwick was a British artist and writer and an Irish language activist.

Maeve Brennan was an Irish short story writer and journalist. She moved to the United States in 1934 when her father was appointed to the Irish Legation in Washington. She was an important figure in both Irish diaspora writing and in Irish writing itself. Collections of her articles, short stories, and a novella have been published.

Eric Cross was an Irish writer.

Mark Dooley is an Irish philosopher, writer and newspaper columnist. A specialist in continental philosophy, theology and the philosophy of religion, he is the author of several books, including The Politics of Exodus: Kierkegaard's Ethics of Responsibility (2001), Roger Scruton: The Philosopher of Dover Beach (2009), and Why Be a Catholic? (2011).

Bridget Elizabeth Hitler, née Dowling, was Adolf Hitler's sister-in-law via her marriage to Alois Hitler Jr. She was the mother of Alois Hitler's son William Patrick Hitler. She was born and raised in Dublin, Ireland.

Margaretta Alexandra Eagar, was an Irishwoman who served as a nanny to the four daughters of Emperor and Empress Nicholas II and Alexandra Feodorovna of Russia, the Grand Duchesses Olga; Tatiana; Maria; and Anastasia—known collectively as OTMA—from 1898 to 1904.

Maud Gonne MacBride was an English-born Irish republican revolutionary, suffragette and actress. Of Anglo-Irish descent, she was won over to Irish nationalism by the plight of evicted people in the Land Wars. She also actively agitated for Home Rule. She is well known for being the muse and long-time love interest of Irish poet W. B. Yeats.

John Ellard Gore (1845–1910) was an Irish amateur astronomer and prolific author, and a founding member of the British Astronomical Association. He was mainly interested in variable stars of which he discovered several, most notably W Cygni in 1884, U Orionis in 1885, and independently discovered Nova Persei. In 2009, the IAU named a lunar impact crater after Gore.

Isabella Augusta, Lady Gregory was an Irish dramatist, folklorist and theatre manager. With William Butler Yeats and Edward Martyn, she co-founded the Irish Literary Theatre and the Abbey Theatre, and wrote numerous short works for both companies. Lady Gregory produced a number of books of retellings of stories taken from Irish mythology. Born into a class that identified closely with British rule, she turned against it. Her conversion to cultural nationalism, as evidenced by her writings, was emblematic of many of the political struggles to occur in Ireland during her lifetime.

Beatrice Ethel Grimshaw was a writer and traveller of Irish origin, for many years based in Papua New Guinea.

Veronica Guerin was an Irish crime reporter who was murdered by drug lords. Born in Dublin, she was an athlete in school, and later played on the Irish national teams for both football and basketball. After studying accountancy she ran a public-relations firm for seven years, before working for Fianna Fáil and as an election agent for Seán Haughey. She became a reporter in 1990, writing for the Sunday Business Post and Sunday Tribune. In 1994 she began writing about crime for the Sunday Independent. In 1996 she was fatally shot while stopped at a traffic light. The shooting caused national outrage in Ireland. Investigation into her death led to a number of arrests and convictions.

Althea Gyles was an Irish poet and artist. She is known for her book cover designs, for writers who included W. B. Yeats.

Aidan Higgins was an Irish writer. He wrote short stories, travel pieces, radio drama and novels. Among his published works are Langrishe, Go Down (1966), Balcony of Europe (1972) and the biographical Dog Days (1998). His writing is characterised by non-conventional foreign settings and a stream of consciousness narrative mode. Most of his early fiction is autobiographical - "like slug trails, all the fiction happened."

Rosamond Jacob was an Irish writer and activist.

Neil Patrick Jordan is an Irish film director, screenwriter, novelist and short-story writer. His first book, Night in Tunisia, won a Somerset Maugham Award and the Guardian Fiction Prize in 1979. He won an Academy Award for The Crying Game (1992). He has also won three Irish Film and Television Awards, as well as the Silver Bear for Best Director at the Berlin International Film Festival for The Butcher Boy (1997).

Maud Joynt was an Irish Celtic scholar and linguist.

Thomas Michael Kettle was an Irish economist, journalist, barrister, writer, war poet, soldier and Home Rule politician. As a member of the Irish Parliamentary Party, he was Member of Parliament (MP) for East Tyrone from 1906 to 1910 at Westminster. He joined the Irish Volunteers in 1913, then on the outbreak of World War I in 1914 enlisted for service in the British Army, with which he was killed in action on the Western Front in the Autumn of 1916. He was a much admired old comrade of James Joyce, who considered him to be his best friend in Ireland, as well as the likes of Francis Sheehy-Skeffington, Oliver St. John Gogarty and Robert Wilson Lynd.

Máire MacSwiney Brugha was an Irish activist who was the daughter of Terence MacSwiney and niece of Mary MacSwiney. As well as an activist she was also an author and is now regarded as a person of historical importance.

Nuala McKeever is a comic actress from Belfast, Northern Ireland.

L. T. Meade was the pseudonym of Elizabeth Thomasina Meade Smith (1844–1914), a prolific writer of girls' stories. She was born in Bandon, County Cork, Ireland, daughter of Rev. R. T. Meade, of Nohoval, County Cork. She later moved to London, where she married Alfred Toulmin Smith in September 1879.

Dame Jean Iris Murdoch was an Irish and British novelist and philosopher. Murdoch is best known for her novels about good and evil, sexual relationships, morality, and the power of the unconscious. Her first published novel, Under the Net, was selected in 1998 as one of Modern Library's 100 best English-language novels of the 20th century. Her 1978 novel The Sea, the Sea won the Booker Prize. In 1987, she was made a Dame by Queen Elizabeth II for services to literature. In 2008, The Times ranked Murdoch twelfth on a list of "The 50 greatest British writers since 1945".

Eibhlín Nic Niocaill was an Irish Gaelic League activist.

Sister Nivedita was an Irish teacher, author, social activist, school founder and disciple of Swami Vivekananda. She spent her childhood and early youth in Ireland. She was engaged to marry a Welsh youth, but he died soon after their engagement.

Josephine Edna O'Brien is an Irish novelist, memoirist, playwright, poet and short story writer. Philip Roth described her as "the most gifted woman now writing in English", while a former President of Ireland, Mary Robinson, cited her as "one of the great creative writers of her generation".

Kate O'Brien was an Irish novelist and playwright.

Billy O'Callaghan is an Irish short fiction writer and novelist. He is best known for his short-story collection The Things We Lose, The Things We Leave Behind, which was awarded the Bord Gáis Energy Irish Book Award for the short story in 2013 and his widely-translated novel My Coney Island Baby, which was shortlisted for the Royal Society of Literature's Encore Award.

Mary Jane O'Donovan Rossa was an Irish poet and political activist.

Ursula O'Farrell, née Cussen, is an Irish author and lecturer on the topic of counselling, and has worked for over 35 years as a counsellor.

Liam O'Flaherty was a major Irish novelist, short-story writer and must be ranked as one of the foremost socialist writers in the first part of the 20th century, writing about the common people's experience and from their perspective. Others are Seán O'Casey, Pádraic Ó Conaire, Peadar O'Donnell, Máirtín Ó Cadhain, and Seosamh Mac Grianna, all of them Irish language speakers who chose to write either in Irish or English.

Katharine A. O'Keeffe O'Mahoney was an Irish-born American educator, lecturer, and writer. A teacher of poetry to Robert Frost, she was also the author of Famous Irishwomen (1907). O'Mahoney was one of the first Catholic women in New England, if not in the United States, to speak in public from the platform. Among her lectures may be mentioned "A Trip to Ireland" (illustrated); "Religion and Patriotism in English and Irish History" (illustrated); "Mary, Queen of Scots", and "Joan of Arc" ; "An Evening with Milton, including recitations from Paradise Lost", illustrated with fifty views from Dore; "An Evening with Dante, including recitations from the Divine Comedy", illustrated by seventy-six views from Dore; and "The Passion Play of Oberammergau". She founded, and until marriage, edited and published The Sunday Register.

Nessa O’Mahony is an Irish poet and a freelance teacher and writer.

Alice Jacqueline Perry was a poet, a feminist and the first woman in Europe to graduate with a degree in engineering.

Cornelius Ryan was an Irish-American journalist and author known mainly for writing popular military history. He was especially known for his histories of World War II events: The Longest Day: 6 June 1944 D-Day (1959), The Last Battle (1966), and A Bridge Too Far (1974).

Ethel Lilian Voynich, née Boole was an Irish novelist and musician, and a supporter of several revolutionary causes. She was born in Cork, but grew up in England. Voynich was a significant figure, not only on the late Victorian literary scene, but also in Russian émigré circles. She is best known for her novel The Gadfly, which became hugely popular in her lifetime, especially in Russia.

Ella Young was an Irish poet and Celtic mythologist active in the Gaelic and Celtic Revival literary movement of the late 19th and early 20th century. Born in Ireland, Young was an author of poetry and children's books. She emigrated from Ireland to the United States in 1925 as a temporary visitor and lived in California. For five years she gave speaking tours on Celtic mythology at American universities, and in 1931 she was involved in a publicized immigration controversy when she attempted to become a citizen.

Rose Maud Young was an Irish writer, scholar and collector of Irish songs, best known for her work to preserve the Irish Language.