Nesbit, O'Brien, Moore

Since my last post, I've biographies of Evelyn Nesbit, the children's author, and Frances Moore, the first Canadian novelist, and Flann O'Brien, the Irish writer. Julia Briggs does a good job of Woman of Passion: for a children's writer, it's kind of wild to find out the author got married two months before her son was born in the 1890s. Reading this book also informed me on the life of Philip Marston, who went blind, lost his fiancee, mother, two sisters, two best friends, all his nieces and nephews, went dumb and died of tuberculosis by the time he was 36. Flann O'Brien was an alcoholic -- it was interesting to read about Ireland in the 1950s, when it was normal for men to be celibate. Frances Moore was a clergyman's daughter, then wife, and spent a few years in Canada and set one of her novels here. Biography by Lorraine McMullen.