Emma Donoghue
Author of Room
About the Author
Emma Donoghue was born on October 24, 1969 in Dublin, Ireland. She received her BA degree from the University College Dublin and PhD in English from University of Cambridge. Her first novel was Stir. Her next novel was Hood which won the 1997 American Library Association's Gay, Lesbian and Bisexual show more Book Award for Literature. Her novel Slammerkin was a finalist in the 2001 Irish Times Irish Literature Prize for Fiction. The Sealed Letter, published in 2008, is a work of historical fiction. This work was the joint winner of the 2009 Lambda Literary Award for Lesbian Fiction. She continued writing several award winning novels including Room which was shortlisted for the Man Booker Prize in September 2010. Some of her other works include Astray, Three and a Half Deaths, and Frog Music. (Bowker Author Biography) show less
Image credit: Emma Donoghue © Mark Raynes Roberts, 2015.
Series
Works by Emma Donoghue
Poems Between Women: Four Centuries of Love, Romantic Friendship, and Desire (1997) — Editor — 93 copies
Room (Oberon Modern Plays) 3 copies
Since First I Saw Your Face 2 copies
The Widow's Curse 2 copies
Donoghue, Emma Archive 1 copy
Vanitas 1 copy
The Tale of the Skin 1 copy
Associated Works
This Is My Best: Great Writers Share Their Favorite Work (2004) — Contributor — 165 copies, 3 reviews
Light the Dark: Writers on Creativity, Inspiration, and the Artistic Process (2017) — Contributor — 147 copies, 4 reviews
Thicker Than Water: Coming-of-Age Stories by Irish & Irish American Writers (2001) — Contributor — 50 copies, 1 review
Inviting Interruptions: Wonder Tales in the Twenty-First Century (Fairy-Tale Studies) (2021) — Contributor — 5 copies
Tagged
Common Knowledge
- Birthdate
- 1969-10-24
- Gender
- female
- Nationality
- Ireland (Birth)
Canada - Birthplace
- Dublin, Ireland
- Places of residence
- Dublin, Ireland
London, Ontario, Canada
England, UK
New York, New York, USA - Education
- University College Dublin (BA)
University of Cambridge (PhD) - Occupations
- playwright
novelist
literary historian
teacher
scriptwriter - Relationships
- Donoghue, Denis (father)
Roulston, Christine (life partner) - Short biography
- Born in Dublin, Ireland, in October 1969, I am the youngest of eight children of Frances and Denis Donoghue (the literary critic). I attended Catholic convent schools in Dublin, apart from one eye-opening year in New York at the age of ten. In 1990 I earned a first-class honours BA in English and French from University College Dublin (unfortunately, without learning to actually speak French). I moved to England, and in 1997 received my PhD (on the concept of friendship between men and women in eighteenth-century English fiction) from the University of Cambridge. From the age of 23, I have earned my living as a writer, and have been lucky enough to never have an ‘honest job’ since I was sacked after a single summer month as a chambermaid. After years of commuting between England, Ireland, and Canada, in 1998 I settled in London, Ontario, where I live with Christine Roulston and our son Finn (12) and daughter Una (9).
Members
Discussions
May 2019: Emma Donoghue in Monthly Author Reads (June 2019)
Room by Emma Henderson in Orange January/July (June 2012)
Reviews
This story was very slow-moving, which was good for an audiobook, as my mind could do its usual wandering and still return without missing much. The narration was rich with accents and dialects. The plot livened up toward the end and got very interesting. And the closing was worth waiting for.
Recommended, especially as an audiobook.
Recommended, especially as an audiobook.
Emma Donoghue is most famous for her book Room which was made into a movie. For me, though, that book is an outlier in Donoghue's oeuvre. Most of her books have been historical fiction: The Pull of the Stars was set during the Spanish flu pandemic, The Wonder involves a nurse trained by Florence Nightingale, Frog Music takes place in 1876 in San Francisco. So, this book which is set in the early 19th century continues that tradition.
Eliza Raine was born in Madras, India to an English father and an Indian mother. At a young age she was sent to England to be educated and soon after her parents died. She will be wealthy when she attains her majority and, in the meantime, her guardian in York seems to give her ample spending money. During the school year she lives at a boarding school just outside York but she experiences some racism due to her mixed heritage from the other girls. She sleeps in a small room under the eaves near the rooms of the maids and the cook instead of a dorm room with other girls. Then a new student, Anne Lister, joins the school and is put into the same room with Eliza. Anne comes from a rather poor farming family in Yorkshire so she is quite the polar opposite to Eliza. And, yet, the two girls become fast friends and then lovers. Their relationship ends when Anne breaks her leg (in an escapade of the type she is known for and which she encourages Eliza to take part in) and has to go home to her family. It was only a year that they were together but Eliza remained deeply in love with Anne for the rest of her life. Ten years later, when Anne had moved on to other women, Eliza was sent to an insane asylum that the schoolgirls used to walk beside and wondered about the people incarcerated there. Eliza composes letters to Anne as she swings from depression to mania but it is doubtful that those letters ever reached Anne. Through these letters we learn a lot about Eliza but Anne stays enigmatic.
Eliza and Anne were real people and Anne, at least, is rather famous as one of the first openly lesbian women. She left behind copious journals which were written in code about her many love affairs. Emma Donoghue has said she has been obsessed by Eliza and Anne for many years and that she particularly wanted to give voice to Eliza. I listened to the audiobook which made the developing relationship and then its end particularly poignant.… (more)
Eliza Raine was born in Madras, India to an English father and an Indian mother. At a young age she was sent to England to be educated and soon after her parents died. She will be wealthy when she attains her majority and, in the meantime, her guardian in York seems to give her ample spending money. During the school year she lives at a boarding school just outside York but she experiences some racism due to her mixed heritage from the other girls. She sleeps in a small room under the eaves near the rooms of the maids and the cook instead of a dorm room with other girls. Then a new student, Anne Lister, joins the school and is put into the same room with Eliza. Anne comes from a rather poor farming family in Yorkshire so she is quite the polar opposite to Eliza. And, yet, the two girls become fast friends and then lovers. Their relationship ends when Anne breaks her leg (in an escapade of the type she is known for and which she encourages Eliza to take part in) and has to go home to her family. It was only a year that they were together but Eliza remained deeply in love with Anne for the rest of her life. Ten years later, when Anne had moved on to other women, Eliza was sent to an insane asylum that the schoolgirls used to walk beside and wondered about the people incarcerated there. Eliza composes letters to Anne as she swings from depression to mania but it is doubtful that those letters ever reached Anne. Through these letters we learn a lot about Eliza but Anne stays enigmatic.
Eliza and Anne were real people and Anne, at least, is rather famous as one of the first openly lesbian women. She left behind copious journals which were written in code about her many love affairs. Emma Donoghue has said she has been obsessed by Eliza and Anne for many years and that she particularly wanted to give voice to Eliza. I listened to the audiobook which made the developing relationship and then its end particularly poignant.… (more)
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Awards
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Statistics
- Works
- 38
- Also by
- 32
- Members
- 31,374
- Popularity
- #627
- Rating
- 3.9
- Reviews
- 1,799
- ISBNs
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- Languages
- 23
- Favorited
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I think I also might be getting slightly more emotional over this book than it deserves because it's about a science oriented childless widower who gets a chance to take on a parental role at the age of 80. As a science oriented childless individual who just spent the evening with my BBBS little and often jokes with my friends that I'm probably just destined to maintain my Auntie Mame energy or perhaps ultimately end up in a Secondhand Lions retirement, it hits a bit different.… (more)