Boylan, Clare 1948-2006
(Clare Catherine Boylan)

OBITUARY NOTICE—

See index for CA sketch: Born April 21, 1948, in Dublin, Ireland; died of cancer, May 16, 2006. Journalist, editor, and author. An award-winning journalist and popular novelist, Boylan received acclaim most recently for 2003's Emma Brown, a novel based on a fragment left behind by Charlotte Brontë. Exposed to the writing life at an early age, as a child she helped her mother type up children's stories that she had written for her daughters; much later, one of these tales was turned into a 1988 Oscar-nominated short film, Making Waves. Educated by Catholic nuns, Boylan gained a strong work ethic and began her early career as a salesperson for a book store called Eason's. Deciding to go into journalism, she found a job in 1966 as a reporter for the Dublin Evening Press, where she would be promoted to feature writer. A series she wrote about homeless women led to her winning the 1974 Journalist of the Year award. Boylan was also the editor of the magazine Young Women from 1968 to 1970, and, after leaving the newspaper in 1978, edited Image magazine from 1981 to 1984. By this time, her career was shifting into fiction writing with her first novel, Holy Pictures, seeing publication in 1983. Boylan would go on to write seven novels and three short story collections, as well as editing two anthologies. Among her fiction titles are Last Resorts (1984), Concerning Virgins (1990), Room for a Single Lady (1997), and The Collected Stories (2001). Boylan's fiction was notable, according to critics, for its outstanding research, none more so than her final book, Emma Brown, which some reviewers considered her most accomplished achievement. In later years, Boylan also was a writing instructor and a literary critic for such periodicals as the London Sunday Times and the London Guardian.

OBITUARIES AND OTHER SOURCES:

PERIODICALS

Times (London, England), May 18, 2006, p. 61.