Encyclopedia of Literature: Joseph O'Connor Biography to Cynthia Ozick Biography

Literature Reference: American Literature, English Literature, Classics & Modern Fiction

Joseph O'Connor Biography - (1963– ), Cowboys and Indians, True Believers, Desperadoes, The Secret World of the Irish Male

Irish novelist, born in Dublin, the older brother of the Irish rock star Sinead O'Connor; he was educated at University College, Dublin, and worked for the British Nicaraguan Solidarity Campaign before becoming a full-time writer in 1988. Cowboys and Indians (1991), his first novel, is a vivid and anarchically humorous treatment of a young Irishman who goes to London to pursue a career in rock mus…

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Octopus, The - The Pit, The Octopus

a novel by Frank Norris, published in 1901, the first volume of a projected trilogy, ?The Epic of the Wheat?, of which the only other volume is The Pit (1903). Generally considered his greatest novel, it dramatizes the struggle between California wheat ranchers and the railroad, the ?octopus? of the title, which transports the wheat. Norris drew directly on the events of the Mussel Slough ?massacr…

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Clifford Odets Biography - (1906–63), Waiting for Lefty, Awake and Sing!, Till the Day I Die, Paradise Lost

American playwright, born in Philadelphia, but brought up in New York City. He left school early to become an actor, initially in radio and later with the Theatre Guild. At 25, he was a founder member of the Group Theatre, together with Harold Clurman, Lee Strasberg, and Cheryl Crawford: for the Group he later wrote his first major work, Waiting for Lefty (1935), which deals with a taxi drivers' s…

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Peadar O'Donnell Biography - (1893–1986), The Gates Flew Open, Salud! An Irishman in Spain, There Will Be Another Day

Irish novelist, editor, and political activist, born in Meenmore, Co. Donegal, educated at St Patrick's Teacher Training College, Dublin. After working for the Irish Transport and General Workers' Union in 1918, he joined the IRA in 1919 and fought in the War of Independence. Opposing the Treaty of 1921, he took the side of the republicans in the Civil War, was captured in 1922, and imprisoned for…

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Gerald O'Donovan, pseudonym of Jeremiah O'donovan Biography - (1871–1942), pseudonym of Jeremiah O'donovan, Father Ralph, Waiting, How They Did It

Irish novelist, born in Co. Down. He entered the seminary at Maynooth and was ordained a Catholic priest in 1895. Posted to a parish in Loughrea, Co. Galway, he became active in the Gaelic League and the Irish Agricultural Organisation Society. Through his connections with key figures in the Irish cultural revival, such as Edward Martyn, O'Donovan enlisted the support of Jack B. Yeats in the build…

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Eimar O'Duffy (Eimar Ultan O'Duffy) Biography - (1893–1935), (Eimar Ultan O'Duffy), The Wasted Island, Printer's Errors

Irish novelist, born in Dublin, educated at University College, Dublin, where he qualified as a dentist. He became involved in the Irish cultural and nationalist movement, contributing a few unsuccessful plays to Edward Martyn's Irish Theatre, while joining the Irish Republican Brotherhood and becoming a captain in the Irish Volunteers prior to the 1916 Rising. O'Duffy's first novel, The Wasted Is…

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Julia O'Faolain Biography - (1932– ), We Might See Sights! and Other Stories, Godded and Codded, Man in the Cellar

Irish novelist and short-story writer, born in London, the daughter of Sean O'Faolain, educated at University College, Dublin, with further study at the University of Rome and the Sorbonne in Paris. We Might See Sights! and Other Stories (1968) is a multifarious collection set in Ireland and Italy, and varying in tone from the tender and gently humorous to the acid and gruesome. Her first novel, G…

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Sean O'Faolain (Sean John Francis Whelan) Biography - (1900–91), (Sean John Francis Whelan), Midsummer Night Madness and Other Stories, A Nest of Simple Folk

Irish writer, born in Cork, the son of a policeman, educated at the National University of Ireland; after a period with the Irish Republican Army during the Troubles, he went to Harvard for three years (1926?9). He lectured at St Mary's College, Strawberry Hill, until his return to Dublin in 1933. His first published collection of short stories, Midsummer Night Madness and Other Stories (1932), is…

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Odia Ofeimun Biography - (1950– ), Opon Ifa, Guardian, Poems of Black Africa, The Poet Lied, A Handle for the Flutist

Nigerian poet, born in Pruekpon in the Bendel State of Western Nigeria, educated at the University of Ibadan, where he began contributing verse to the magazine Opon Ifa. He was personal assistant to the Nigerian politican Chief Obafemi Awolo before joining the editorial board of the Lagos Guardian and subsequently became general secretary of the Association of Nigerian Authors. In 1989 he left Nig…

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Of Human Bondage - Bildungsroman

a novel by W. Somerset Maugham, published in 1915. Inspired by Goethe and Samuel Butler, Maugham's lengthy Bildungsroman was written in an attempt to free himself from the worries and obsessions which he carried into adulthood from his difficult early years. He described it as an autobiographical novel, and his protagonist, Philip Carey, suffers the same childhood misfortunes as Maugham himself: t…

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Liam O'Flaherty Biography - (1897–1984), Thy Neighbour's Wife, The Black Soul, The Informer, Mr Gilhooley, The Assassin

Irish novelist and short-story writer, born on Inishmore, the largest of the Aran Islands where his father farmed a few, bare acres. He was educated at the Dublin diocesan seminary, but decided not to take Holy Orders. He spent one year at University College, Dublin, before enlisting in the Irish Guards in 1915. He fought in France and was invalided out in 1917; during a year's convalescence from …

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Grace Ogot (Grace Emily Akinyi Ogot) Biography - (1930– ), (Grace Emily Akinyi Ogot), The Promised Land, The Graduate, Land Without Thunder, The Other Woman

Kenyan novelist and short-story writer, born in Butere in the Luospeaking Central Nyanza district of Kenya; she studied midwifery at St Thomas's Hospital in London. She was Principal of the Women's Training Centre at Kismu, Kenya, before becoming a delegate to the General Assembly of the United Nations in 1975. Following her election to the Kenyan Parliament in 1985 she was appointed Assistant Min…

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Redmond O'Hanlon (Redmond Douglas O'Hanlon) Biography - (1947– ), (Redmond Douglas O'Hanlon)

British travel writer, born in Dorset, educated at Marlborough and at Merton College, Oxford. Joseph Conrad and Charles Darwin: The Influence of Scientific Thought on Conrad's Fiction (1984) was his first major work. In 1981 he became an assistant editor with the Times Literary Supplement. Into the Heart of Borneo (1984) recounts a journey with the poet James Fenton through tropical forests in sea…

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Frank O'Hara Biography - (1926–66), A City Winter and Other Poems, Second Avenue, Odes, Lunch Poems

American poet, born in Baltimore, educated at the New England Conservatory of Music, Harvard, and the University of Michigan. He lived mostly in New York City, and was one of the leading figures of the New York School of Poets, which included John Ashbery, Barbara Guest, Kenneth Koch, Ted Berrigan, and James Schuyler. An art critic and professional curator, O'Hara worked for the Museum of Modern A…

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John O'Hara (John Henry O'Hara) Biography - (1905–70), (John Henry O'Hara), New Yorker, Appointment in Samarra, Butterfield 8, Hope of Heaven

American novelist, playwright, and screenwriter, born in Pottsville, Pennsylvania. One of the most prolific of twentieth-century American writers, O'Hara never attended college or university, but his literary apprenticeship on small-town newspapers provided him with a rich repository of anecdote and incident upon which he drew over his literary career; a fine eye for detail and an understanding of…

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Isidore Okpewho Biography - (1941– ), The Epic in Africa: Towards a Poetic of the Oral Performance

Nigerian novelist and critic, born in Abraka in midwestern Nigeria, educated at the University of Ibadan and the University of Denver, Colorado. In 1992 he was appointed Professor of Afro-American and African Studies at Binghampton University, New York. His critical works include The Epic in Africa: Towards a Poetic of the Oral Performance (1979), Myth in Africa: A Study of its Aesthetic and Cultu…

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Ben Okri (Benjamin Okri) Biography - (1959– ), (Benjamin Okri), Flowers and Shadows, The Landscapes Within, The Famished Road, Songs of Enchantment

Nigerian novelist, poet, and short-story writer, born in Lagos, educated at Urhobo College, Warri, and at the University of Essex. His first novel, Flowers and Shadows (1980), focuses on an adolescent boy living a cocooned existence until he discovers his father's ruthless business dealings; the consequences become explosive for the entire family. The Landscapes Within (1981) deals with an artist …

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Sharon Olds Biography - (1942– ), Satan Says, The Dead and the Living, The Gold Cell, The Sign of Saturn

American poet, born in San Francisco, educated at Stanford and Columbia; she has lectured at several colleges, and taught creative writing at New York University. By her own commentary, Olds ?began by working in close forms, then more and more wanted a line-break and poem-shape which felt more alive to me?. What distinguishes her verse, however, is not formal qualities but the humanity and vigour …

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Old Times

a play by Harold Pinter, performed and published in 1971. This characteristically enigmatic play involves a reunion between Kate, now married to Deeley and living quietly in the country, and Anna, an old friend who knew her well when they were young women in London but has not seen her for some years. Gradually, it becomes apparent that, under the polite conversation, Deeley and Anna harbour hosti…

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Old Wives' Tale, The

a novel by Arnold Bennett, published in 1908. Generally considered Bennett's masterpiece, this is the epic story of two sisters, Sophia and Constance Baines, daughters of a draper of Bursley (Burslem, one of the Five Towns). It charts their progress from their girlhood over the shop to old age, contrasting the dull, patient, stay-at-home Constance, who marries the shop's assistant Samuel Povey, wi…

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Edith Olivier Biography - (1872–1948), The Love-Child, As Far As Jane's Grandmother's

British novelist of Huguenot descent, born in Wilton, Wiltshire, one of the ten children of the autocratic and conservative Rector (later Canon) of Wilton, educated at St Hugh's College, Oxford. At the age of 55 she produced her first novel, The Love-Child (1927), a vivid, strange, absorbing story of the neurotic, possessive spinster Agatha, haunted by an imaginary child, the bold, alluring Claris…

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Tillie Olsen Biography - (1913–2007), Partisan Review, Yonnondio: From the Thirties, Silences, Tell Me a Riddle

American poet, novelist, short-story writer, critic, and activist, born in Omaha, Nebraska, she grew up in a poor household. She left school early, and as a teenager wrote various sketches and musical dramas for the Young People's Socialist League; in 1932 she was imprisoned for her leafleting activities. Her early work, much of which described her life as an industrial worker in her home state of…

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Charles Olson Biography - (1910–70), American Renaissance, Call Me Ishmael, Studies in Classic American Literature, Stocking Cap, The Fiery Hunt

American poet, born in Worcester, Massachusetts, educated at Wesleyan University and Harvard. Olson obtained an MA in 1933 with a thesis on Herman Melville: his investigation of Melville's library was later acknowledged by F. O. Matthiessen in American Renaissance. His exploration of Melville's annotations of Shakespeare was of particular importance; entering Harvard in 1939 as a graduate student …

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Omeros - Iliad

a poem in seven books by Derek Walcott, published in 1990 in an edition of 325 pages. ?Omeros? is the Greek for Homer, whose Iliad is echoed in the names of the poem's chief protagonists, the St Lucian fishermen Achille and Hector; their rivalry for the love of Helen, the beautiful servant girl emblematically identified with the island, is central to the poem's development. Odysseus has a counterp…

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Kole Omotoso Biography - (1943– ), The Edifice, The Combat, Fella's Choice, Just Before Dawn

Nigerian novelist, dramatist, and critic, born in Akure, educated at the Universities of Ibadan and Edinburgh. His early novels are characterized by a cool, unsentimental lucidity of style which belies the remorseless approach of tragedy: The Edifice (1971) concerns the slow disintegration of the marriage between Dele, a Nigerian overseas student, and Daisy, an English girl, when he takes her to N…

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Michael Ondaatje Biography - (1943– ), The Collected Works of Billy the Kid, Coming Through Slaughter, Running in the Family

Canadian poet and fiction-writer, born in Colombo, Ceylon (now Sri Lanka) of Dutch ancestry, educated at Dulwich College, from 1954. He moved to Canada in 1962 and attended the University of Toronto and Queen's University, Kingston, Ontario, before subsequently teaching at the University of Western Ontario and Glendon College in Toronto. His work is difficult to categorize since it frequently conf…

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One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest

a novel by Ken Kesey, published in 1962. The narrative is told by Chief Bromden, so named for his Native American descent, an inmate in a psychopathic ward of an Oregon mental hospital, where he has chosen the guise of a mute to defend his alienation from a society he cannot tolerate. Bromden tells of the eruption into the ward of Randle Patrick McMurphy, an ebullient convict serving time for rape…

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Eugene O'Neill (Eugene Gladstone O'Neill) Biography - (1888–1953), (Eugene Gladstone O'Neill), Beyond the Horizon, Chris Christopherson, Anna Christie, The Emperor Jones

American dramatist, born in New York, the son of James O'Neill, a well-known romantic actor. After a fragmented education, including a Catholic boarding-school and a year at Princeton, O'Neill led an adventurous life as a gold prospector, beachcomber, seaman, and actor. In 1912 he suffered a physical breakdown and the enforced rest turned him to drama. His earliest work was written in association …

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Only Child, The

James Kirkup's ?autobiography of infancy?, published in 1957. The book was highly acclaimed for its remarkably effective recreations of the atmospheres and particulars of Kirkup's life up to the age of six, when his family left the two-room flat in South Shields, Country Durham, which forms the principal setting. The authenticity with which the consciousness of a child is conveyed is partly the re…

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On the Road - inter alia, On the Road, The Town and the City, Howl

Jack Kerouac's best-known novel, published in 1957. The original draft was written with great rapidity in 1951, following the development of the improvisatory style Kerouac described as ?spontaneous prose?; accordingly, it was typed onto a continuous roll of paper to avoid the interruptions necessary for the changing of separate sheets. The often head-long narrative, which is structured around the…

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Open Theatre - Viet Rock, The Serpent, Terminal, Mutation Show, Nightwalk

New York City, an American theatre company; with Living Theatre, one of the two most respected avant-garde theatre companies in recent American history. From its inception in February 1963, the Open Theatre was committed to experimentation in non-naturalistic modes of theatre. Although a non-hierarchical organization, the Open Theatre is inextricably linked with the name of Joseph Chaikin, a Livin…

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O Pioneers!

a novel by Willa Cather, published in 1913. The novel, with a title taken from Walt Whitman, celebrates the courage and transfiguring stoicism of immigrants in Nebraska, where Cather grew up. After the death of her father, Alexandra Bergson assumes responsibility for the family farm since her mother lacks the ability to do so and her brother, Emil, is too young. Alexandra finds in herself the qual…

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George Oppen Biography - (1908–84), An ‘Objectivists’ Anthology, Discrete Series, The Materials, This in Which, Seascape, Primitive, Of Being Numerous

American poet, born in New Rochelle, New York, he grew up in California. From 1930 to 1933 he lived at Le Beausset in France, where he and his wife founded To Publishers, producing editions by various poets associated with Objectivism, including Louis Zukofsky's An ?Objectivists? Anthology in 1932 (see Objectivist Poetry). His first collection of poetry, Discrete Series (1934), for which Ezra Poun…

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A. R. Orage (Alfred Richard Orage) Biography - (1875–1934), (Alfred Richard Orage), Friedrich Nietzsche, New Age, Meetings with Remarkable Men, New English Weekly

British editor and critic, born at Dacre in Yorkshire; he taught in Leeds after training at a college in Culham, Oxford-shire. His interest in the cultural implications of socialism led him to found the Leeds Arts Club with Holbrook Jackson. His early publications include the monograph Friedrich Nietzsche (1905). In 1906 he became a journalist in London and took over the New Age in association wit…

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Orators, The - The Orators, Collected Poems, The English Auden

the second of W. H. Auden's books, published in 1932, with revised editions in 1934 and 1966. Sub-titled ?An English Study?, the work is in three parts, ?The Initiates?, ?The Journal of Airman?, and ?Six Odes?, the first two of which are predominantly written in prose. Its disjunctive development, experimental formal strategies, and pervasive sense of combined personal and cultural crises identify…

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John Ormond Biography - (1923–90), Indications, Requiem and Celebration, Definition of a Waterfall, Selected Poems, A Bronze Mask

Welsh poet, born at Dunvant, near Swansea, educated at University College, Swansea. After working as a journalist, he began a career with the BBC in 1955, becoming a distinguished director and producer of documentary films. Following the appearance of his verse in Indications (with James Kirkup and John Bayliss, 1942), he was advised by Vernon Watkins to publish no more poetry before he was 30; he…

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P. J. O'Rourke (Patrick Jake O'Rourke) Biography - (1947– ), (Patrick Jake O'Rourke), Baltimore Harry, New York Herald, The National Lampoon, Rolling Stone

American humorist, born in Toledo, Ohio, educated at Miami University and Johns Hopkins University. Working at first for underground newspapers in the 1960s, including Baltimore Harry (1968?71), he soon moved towards the mainstream, first with the New York Herald (1971?3), then as editor with The National Lampoon (1973?81), and head of the international affairs desk of Rolling Stone in 1981. O'Rou…

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Simon J. Ortiz Biography - (1941– ), Rough Rock News, Naked in the Wind, Going for the Rain, A Good Journey

Native American poet and short-story writer, born in Albuquerque, New Mexico; he was brought up within the Acoma Pueblo community and was educated at the universities of New Mexico and Iowa. Ortiz has taught at various educational institutions and edited the Navajo publication Rough Rock News. His collections of verse include Naked in the Wind (1970), Going for the Rain (1976), and A Good Journey …

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Joe Orton Biography - (1933–67), The Erpingham Camp, The Bacchae, Entertaining Mr Sloane, Loot, What the Butler Saw

British playwright, born in Leicester, the son of a municipal gardener; he left school to train as an actor. He wrote several lively short comedies for both the stage and television, including The Erpingham Camp (1967), a variation on Euripides' The Bacchae in which rioting holiday-makers punish the arrogant owner of a seaside camp. His only full-length plays, however, were Entertaining Mr Sloane …

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George Orwell, pseudonym of Eric Arthur Blair Biography - (1903–50), pseudonym of Eric Arthur Blair, Burmese Days, Down and Out in Paris and London

British novelist and social critic, born in Bengal, educated at Eton; he was the son of Richard Blair, an opium agent in the Indian Civil Service, and his much younger wife Ida. Relations between father and son were virtually non-existent for the first eight years of Orwell's life, as he and his mother and older sister Marjorie moved to England in 1904, leaving Richard on his own in India until hi…

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John Osborne (John James Osborne) Biography - (1929–94), (John James Osborne), A Better Class of Person, Epitaph for George Dillon

British playwright, born in London, the son of a commercial artist; he was educated at Belmont School, Devon. The first volume of his autobiography, A Better Class of Person (1981), describes his unhappy childhood and his years as an actor in provincial repertory, during which he wrote Epitaph for George Dillon in collaboration with Anthony Creighton. This study of alienation and ennui was not, ho…

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Femi Osofisan (Femi Baba Adeyemi Osofisan) Biography - (1946– ), (Femi Baba Adeyemi Osofisan), A Restless Run of Locusts, The Chattering and the Song

Nigerian dramatist and novelist, born in Ijebu Ode, Western Nigeria, educated at the universities of Ibadan, Dakar, and Paris. Inspired to some extent by Wole Soyinka, and respecting his achievement, Osofisan nevertheless departs from the older dramatist in providing more emphatic social and political commitment in his own plays, and greater scepticism about the liberating effects of myth and ritu…

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Vincent O'Sullivan (Vincent Gerard O'Sullivan) Biography - (1937– ), (Vincent Gerard O'Sullivan), Our Burning Time, Revenants, Butcher and Co, The Butcher Paper

New Zealand poet, fiction writer, playwright, and editor, born in Auckland, educated at the Universities of Auckland and Oxford. The earliest of his poetry collections, Our Burning Time (1965) and Revenants (1969), rework classical themes to explore relationships and states of mind, while his ?Butcher? sequences (Butcher and Co, 1977, and The Butcher Paper, 1982) in their often macabre portraits o…

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Our Man in Havana - Our Man in Havana, The End of the Affair

a novel by Graham Greene, published in 1958, described by its author as ?a Secret Service comedy? and drawing on his experience of intelligence work in Sierra Leone and London during and after the Second World War. Tracing ?the absurdities of the Cold War? through louche, decadent Havana, shortly before Fidel Castro's revolution ended Batista's rule, the novel shows a British agent, Hawthorne, rec…

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Wilfred Owen (Wilfred Edward Salter Owen) Biography - (1893–1918), (Wilfred Edward Salter Owen), The Hydra, The Hydra, The Bookman, The Nation

British poet, born at Plas Wilmot, Oswestry, Shropshire, the son of a railway official; he was educated at Shrewsbury Technical School. Having failed to win a scholarship to London University, in 1911 he became a lay assistant to the vicar of Dunsden, near Reading, and subsequently taught English in Bordeaux. He volunteered for active service in 1915 and was eventually commissioned into the Manche…

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