Long ignored by critics, Kate O'Brien is beginning to be accorded her proper due and classed among the great novelists of this century. A romantic realist, responsive to the lyrical beauty of the Irish landscape and appreciative of Irish wit, O'Brien is also a subtly feminist writer whose heroines are in search of both freedom and loveófreedom as a prerequisite of love, and education as the first necessity of either. In this first study of her novels as a whole, her development as a writer is traced and the underlying themes of her work are revealed. Irish Literary Studies Series No. 25.