56 Irish women novelists

Cecelia Ahern is an Irish novelist known for her works like PS, I Love You, Where Rainbows End and If You Could See Me Now. Born in Dublin, Ahern is now published in nearly fifty countries, and has sold over 25 million copies of her novels worldwide. Two of her books have been adapted as major motion films.

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.

Maeve Binchy Snell was an Irish novelist, playwright, short story writer, columnist, and speaker. Her novels were characterised by a sympathetic and often humorous portrayal of small-town life in Ireland, and surprise endings. Her novels, which were translated into 37 languages, sold more than 40 million copies worldwide, and her death at age 73, announced by Vincent Browne on Irish television late on 30 July 2012, was mourned as the death of one of Ireland's best-loved and most recognisable writers.

Elizabeth Bowen, CBE was an Irish-British novelist and short story writer, notable for her fiction about life in wartime London.

Clare Boylan was an Irish author, journalist and critic for newspapers, magazines and many international broadcast media.

Sarah Rees Brennan is an Irish writer best known for young adult fantasy fiction. Her first novel, The Demon's Lexicon, was released June 2009 by Simon & Schuster. Brennan's books are bestsellers in the UK.

Frances Browne was an Irish poet and novelist, best remembered for her collection of short stories for children, Granny's Wonderful Chair.

Juanita Casey was a poet, playwright, novelist and artist as well as a horse and zebra trainer and breeder. Her writing celebrates her time in Ireland and the New Forest.

Agnes Castle was a Victorian era Irish author who worked with both her sisters and husband. The stories that she co-wrote were the basis of several plays and films.

Rimi B. Chatterjee is an author based in Kolkata, India. She has published three novels and one academic history which won the SHARP deLong Prize for History of the Book in 2006, as well as a number of translations and short stories. She has been nominated twice for the Vodafone Crossword Book Award, once for fiction and once for translation. She teaches English at Jadavpur University.

Máirín Cregan was an Irish nationalist who was involved in the 1916 Easter Rising and Irish War of Independence. She later made her name writing for children, as well as writing plays and novels for adults.

Julia M. Crottie, sometimes seen as Julia Crotty, was an Irish novelist who detailed rural life in Ireland, writing during the late 19th and early 20th centuries.

Suzanne Rouviere Day (1876–1964) was an Irish feminist, novelist and playwright. She founded the Munster Women's Franchise League, was one of Cork's first women poor-law guardians and served a support role in both World Wars.

Eilís Dillon FRSL was an Irish author of 50 books. Her work has been translated into 14 languages.

Emma Donoghue is an Irish-Canadian playwright, literary historian, novelist, and screenwriter. Her 2010 novel Room was a finalist for the Man Booker Prize and an international best-seller. Donoghue's 1995 novel Hood won the Stonewall Book Award. and Slammerkin (2000) won the Ferro-Grumley Award for Lesbian Fiction. She is a 2011 recipient of the Alex Awards. Room was adapted by Donoghue into a film of the same name. For this, she was nominated for the Academy Award for Best Adapted Screenplay.

Maria Edgeworth was a prolific Anglo-Irish writer of adults' and children's literature. She was one of the first realist writers in children's literature and was a significant figure in the evolution of the novel in Europe. She held views on estate management, politics and education, and corresponded with some of the leading literary and economic writers, including Sir Walter Scott and David Ricardo.

Anne Teresa Enright is an Irish writer. She has published half a dozen novels, many short stories and a non-fiction work called Making Babies: Stumbling into Motherhood, about the birth of her two children. Her writing explores themes such as family, love, identity and motherhood.

Elizabeth Griffith, sometimes also credited Elizabeth Griffiths, was an 18th-century Welsh-born dramatist, fiction writer, essayist and actress, who lived and worked in Ireland.

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

Anna Maria Hall was an Irish novelist who often published as "Mrs. S. C. Hall". She married Samuel Carter Hall, a writer on art, who described her in Retrospect of a Long Life, from 1815 to 1883. She was born Anna Maria Fielding in Dublin, but left Ireland for England at the age of 15.

Margaret Wolfe Hungerford, née Hamilton,, was an Irish novelist whose light romantic fiction was popular throughout the English-speaking world in the late 19th century.

Rosamond Jacob was an Irish writer and activist.

Julia Kavanagh was an Irish novelist, born at Thurles in Tipperary, Ireland—then part of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland. Her numerous contributions to literature have classified her as one of the non-canonical minor novelist of the Victorian period (1837–1901). Although she is mainly known for the novel and tales she wrote, she also published important non-fiction works that explored the theme of female political, moral and philosophical contributions to society. The appeal of her works is represented by the fact that several of her works have been translated into French, German, Italian and Swedish. Her texts also reached North America, where some of her works appeared in Littel's Living Age, an American magazine. Moreover, she was known to celebrated writers of domestic fiction such as Charles Dickens.

Celine Kiernan is an Irish author of fantasy novels for young adults. She is best known for The Moorehawke Trilogy. Set in an alternate renaissance Europe, the trilogy combines fantasy elements with an exploration of political, humanitarian and philosophical themes.

Mary Josephine Lavin wrote short stories and novels. An Irishwoman, she is now regarded as a pioneer in the field of women's writing. The well-known Irish writer Lord Dunsany mentored Lavin after her father approached him on her behalf to discuss with him some stories she had written.

Ruth Frances Long, also known as R. F. Long and Jessica Thorne, is an Irish author who writes in the fantasy and romance genres. Her novel, The Stone's Heart by Jessica Thorne, has been nominated for the Romantic Novelists' Association Fantasy Romantic Novel award. Her new series has begun with Mageborn

Hannah Lynch was an Irish feminist, novelist, journalist and translator. She spent much of her working life in Paris.

Dorothy Macardle was an Irish writer, novelist, playwright, and non-academic historian. Her book, The Irish Republic, is one of the more frequently cited narrative accounts of the Irish War of Independence and its aftermath, particularly for its exposition of the anti-treaty viewpoint.

Mary Manning Howe Adams was an Irish novelist, playwright and film critic.

Violet Florence Martin was an Irish author who co-wrote a series of novels with cousin Edith Somerville under the pen name of Martin Ross in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries.

Eimear McBride is an Irish novelist whose debut novel, A Girl Is a Half-formed Thing, won the inaugural Goldsmiths Prize in 2013 and the 2014 Baileys Women's Prize for Fiction.

Maura McHugh is an Irish author of horror and fantasy in prose, comic books, plays, and screenplays.

Liz McManus is a former Irish Labour Party politician who served as Deputy Leader of the Labour Party from 2002 to 2007 and Minister of State at the Department of the Environment from 1994 to 1997. She served as a Teachta Dála (TD) for the Wicklow constituency from 1992 to 2011.

Janet McNeill was a prolific Irish novelist and playwright. Author of more than 20 children's books, as well as adult novels, plays, and two opera libretti, she was best known for her children's comic fantasy series My Friend Specs McCann.

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.

Amelia Garland Mears (1842-1920), who published as A. Garland Mears, was an Irish novelist.

Betty Miller was an Irish author of both literary fiction and non-fiction. She wrote her first novel, The Mere Living (1933), whilst studying journalism at University College, London. Her literary reputation was established by the publication of her biography of Robert Browning (1952), which earned her election to the Royal Society of Literature. After the Second World War she wrote extensively for literary journals including Horizon, The Cornhill Magazine and The Twentieth Century. Of her seven novels, two are still in print: Farewell, Leicester Square (1941), published by Persephone Books in 2000, and On the Side of the Angels (1945), published by Capuchin Classics in 2012.

Sydney, Lady Morgan, was an Irish novelist, best known as the author of The Wild Irish Girl.

Rosa Mulholland was an Irish novelist, poet and playwright.

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".

C. E. Murphy is an American-born author, based in Ireland, who writes in the fantasy and romance genres. She is the author of the Walker Papers series, The Negotiator Trilogy, and the Inheritor's Cycle as well as The Strongbox Chronicles. She has also written the graphic novel Take a Chance.

Áine Ní Ghlinn is a bilingual Irish journalist, poet, playwright and children's writer. She is the current Laureate na nÓg, 2020—2022, the first to write exclusively in Irish.

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.

Ethel Charlotte Coghill Penrose was an Irish children's writer.

Nannie Lambert Power O'Donoghue, also known as Ann Stewart Lyster Lambert, was born in 1843 and lived until 12 January 1940. She came from a well known upper - middle class family and she was famous for her horse riding, poetry and journalism projects. She was a highly respected journalist and wrote pieces and articles concerning social welfare and animals well being. She was thereto a known musician, novelist and social activist. She has written many different books, her most famous; Riding for Ladies (1887) sold more than 94,000 copies.

Katherine Frances Purdon was an Irish novelist and playwright, part of the Irish Revival movement and a member of the United Irishwomen.

Grace Rhys was an Irish writer brought up in Boyle, County Roscommon.

Anakana Schofield is an Irish-Canadian author, who won the 2012 Amazon.ca First Novel Award and the Debut-Litzer Prize for Fiction in 2013 for her debut novel Malarky. Born in England to an Irish mother, she lived in London and in Dublin, Ireland until moving to Vancouver, British Columbia in 1999. The novel was also a shortlisted nominee for the Ethel Wilson Fiction Prize.

Frances Sheridan was an Anglo-Irish novelist and playwright.

Edith Anna Œnone Somerville was an Irish novelist who habitually signed herself as "E. Œ. Somerville". She wrote in collaboration with her cousin "Martin Ross" under the pseudonym "Somerville and Ross". Together they published a series of fourteen stories and novels, the most popular of which were The Real Charlotte, and Some Experiences of an Irish R. M., published in 1899.

Eithne Strong was a bilingual Irish poet and writer who wrote in both Irish and English. Her first poems in Irish were published in Combar and An Glor 1943-44 under the name Eithne Ni Chonaill. She was a founder member of the Runa Press whose early Chapbooks featured artwork by among others Jack B. Yeats, Sean Keating, Sean O'Sullivan, Harry Kernoff among others. The press was noted for the publication in 1943 of 'Marrowbone Lane by Robert Collis which depicts the fierce fighting that took place during the Easter Rising of 1916.

Baroness Jemima von Tautphoeus was an Irish novelist writing in English. She spent much of her life in Germany and wrote several stories that deal with Bavarian life, manners and history.

Katherine Cecil Thurston was an Irish novelist, best known for two political thrillers.

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.