Norah Hoult

Norah Hoult
Born(1898-09-20)20 September 1898
Dollymount, Dublin
Died6 April 1984(1984-04-06) (aged 85)
Greystones, County Wicklow


Eleanor Lucy Hoult, known by her pen name Norah Hoult, (20 September 1898 – 6 April 1984) was an Irish writer of novels and short stories. Hoult wrote twenty-three novels and four short story collections. Her work deals primarily with themes of alcohol abuse, prostitution, class dynamics and ill-fated marriages. Between the 1940s and 50s, Hoult's work was frequently banned by the Irish Censorship Board.

Early life and education

Hoult was born at 1 Ardilaun Villas, Dollymount, Dublin on 20 September 1898. Her mother, Margaret O'Shaughnessy, was a Catholic who eloped at the age of 21 with a protestant English architect named Powis Hoult. Hoult's mother died when she was nine years old and her father died months later. After her parents' deaths, Hoult and her brother were sent to live with their father's relations in England and were educated in various boarding schools in the north of England.

Career

Hoult began her career in journalism, working for British newspapers. She worked first for the Sheffield Daily Telegraph, followed by the Telegraph and Pearson's Magazine. Her first book, Poor Women!, appeared in 1928. This collection of five short stories received critical praise, and has been reprinted several times, both individually and in selected editions. It was followed by a novel, Time Gentlemen! Time! (1930), which deals with a woman's unhappy marriage to an alcoholic. This novel exemplifies Hoult's interest in depicting the strain of social constrains and maintaining respectability in Ireland during the 1930s and 1950s.

Hoult married the writer Oliver Stonor, and lived with him at The Cottage in Windsor Great Park for a year; the marriage was dissolved in 1934. She returned to Ireland to collect material for her writing in 1931, and remained there until 1937, when she moved to New York for two years. Her next two books, Holy Ireland (1935) and its sequel Coming from the Fair (1937), show Irish family life before World War I.

Fellow Irish writer, Seán Ó Faoláin, wrote to Hoult in 1936 to congratulate her on Holy Ireland. O'Faolain wrote that he 'admire[d] the strength of it [...] and the sympathy of it'. Contemporary critics are similarly complimentary about her work, comparing her not only to short story writers such as O'Faolain and Frank O'Connor but also to novelists including Kate O'Brien and Edna O'Brien for the way in which her work examines the influence of the Catholic Church on the quotidian lives of Irish women.

In 1939 she settled in Bayswater, London, not far from Violet Hunt upon whom Claire Temple the protagonist in There Were No Windows (1944) is modelled. The novel There Were No Windows is set in London during the Second World War in which the trauma of the Blitz impacts upon Claire Temple, a novelist suffering with dementia. In 1957, Hoult, returned to live in Ireland. In 1977 she published her last book.

Hoult died at Jonquil Cottage, Greystones, County Wicklow, on April 6, 1984. She destroyed all of her papers, but Oliver Stoner kept two of her manuscripts which are now held by the Library of Trinity College Dublin. Hoult was a friend of many notable Irish figures including James Stephens and poet and physician Oliver St. John Gogarty. Hoult was also friends with the Scottish writer Fred Urquhart and some of their correspondence is preserved in his archive.

Legacy

Despite a 44 year publishing career, critics have described Hoult's work as "overlooked" and "neglected". Nicola Beauman is quoted as saying Hoult "is a very good example of a woman writer who falls completely out of fashion and is forgotten. She was an absolutely brilliant writer and well-known at the time in a way she isn't now". Beauman, editor at London's Persephone Books, has revisited Hoult's work since her death. In 2005 Persephone Books republished her novel There Were No Windows.

A plaque was unveiled to Hoult at her home, 25 Ashfield Park, Terenure, in September 2025.

Works

References

  1. ↑ Meaney, Geraldine (2018). Heather Ingman; Cliona O. Gallchoir (eds.). A History of Modern Irish Women's Literature. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. p. 193. ISBN 978-1-316-44299-9.
  2. ↑ Éilís, Ní Dhuibne (17 March 2018). "Uncensoring Norah Hoult, a forgotten Irish great". Irish Times. ProQuest 2014596464. Retrieved 17 February 2021.
  3. ↑ Some Eminent Dubliners. Dublin: Dublin Corporation Public Libraries. 1988. p. 30. ISBN 0946841039.
  4. 1 2 Allen, Nicholas (2009). "Hoult, Eleanor Lucy ('Norah')". Dictionary of Irish Biography. Retrieved 6 July 2026.
  5. 1 2 3 4 5 Gleeson, Sinéad (24 March 2018). "Why has Norah Hoult been overlooked?". Irish Times. Retrieved 8 August 2020.
  6. 1 2 3 4 Gleeson, Sinéad (10 September 2015). "A long gaze back at Norah Hoult on her 117th birthday". Irish Times. Retrieved 8 August 2020.
  7. 1 2 3 4 5 "Norah Hoult". Persephone Books. Archived from the original on 14 April 2016. Retrieved 27 September 2017.
  8. ↑ Clarke, Desmond (1985). Ireland in Fiction: A Guide to Irish Novels, Tales, Romances, and Folklore. London: Royal Carbery Books. p. 111. ISBN 0-946645-02-7.
  9. 1 2 3 4 Costello-Sullivan, Kathleen P (2016). "Norah Hoult's 'Poor Women!'". Cambridge University Press. Retrieved 8 August 2020.
  10. 1 2 3 Welch, Robert (2000). The Concise Oxford Companion to Irish Literature. Oxford: Oxford University Press. p. 64. doi:10.1093/acref/9780192800800.001.0001. ISBN 978-0-19-280080-0.
  11. ↑ Reynolds, Horace (16 February 1936). "A Good Novel of Dublin Life; Norah Hoult's "Holy Ireland" Is a Notable Advance Over the Books That Followed Her First Novel, "Poor Women"". New York Times. Retrieved 8 August 2020.
  12. ↑ "Fred Urquhart: An Inventory of His Papers at the Harry Ransom Center". University of Texas. Retrieved 27 September 2017.
  13. ↑ "Plaque Unveiled to Honour Norah Hoult, Irish writer of novels and short stories". Limelight Communications. 20 September 2025. Retrieved 6 July 2026.