Norah Hoult was an Irish writer of novels and short stories.

She was born in Dublin. Her mother, Margaret O'Shaughnessy, was a Catholic girl who eloped at the age of 21 with a Protestant English architect named Powis Hoult. Both Norah's parents died while she was still a child, and she and her brother were sent to live with their father's relations in England, where they were educated in various boarding schools.

Her first book, Poor Women!, appeared in 1928. This collection of five short stories received considerable critical acclaim, 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.

She married the writer Oliver Stonor

Oliver Stonor

Oliver Stonor was an English novelist, reviewer, translator, and man of letters. He was briefly the husband of the Irish writer Norah Hoult....

, and lived with him at The Cottage in Windsor Great Park

Windsor Great Park

Windsor Great Park is a large deer park of , to the south of the town of Windsor on the border of Berkshire and Surrey in England. The park was, for many centuries, the private hunting ground of Windsor Castle and dates primarily from the mid-13th century...

 for a year, but returned to Ireland to collect material for her writing from 1931 to 1937. The marriage was dissolved in 1934. Her next two books, Holy Ireland (1935) and its sequel Coming from the Fair (1937), show Irish family life before World War I

World War I

World War I , which was predominantly called the World War or the Great War from its occurrence until 1939, and the First World War or World War I thereafter, was a major war centred in Europe that began on 28 July 1914 and lasted until 11 November 1918...

.

In 1939 she settled in London, in Bayswater

Bayswater

Bayswater is an area of west London in the City of Westminster and the Royal Borough of Kensington and Chelsea to the west . It is a built-up district located 3 miles west-north-west of Charing Cross, bordering the north of Hyde Park over Kensington Gardens and having a population density of...

, not far from Violet Hunt

Violet Hunt

Isobel Violet Hunt was a British author and literary hostess. Her father was the artist Alfred William Hunt, her mother the novelist and translator Margaret Raine Hunt. Her younger sister Venetia married the designer William Arthur Smith Benson .-Biography:Hunt was born in Durham; the family moved...

 upon whom Claire Temple in There Were No Windows (1944) is modelled. In 1957 she returned to live in Ireland.

In 1977 she published her last book. She died at Jonquil Cottage, Greystones

Greystones

Greystones is a coastal town and small seaside resort in County Wicklow, Ireland. It is located on Ireland’s east coast, south of Bray and south of Dublin , with a population in the region of 15,000....

, County Wicklow

County Wicklow

County Wicklow is a county in Ireland. It is part of the Mid-East Region and is also located in the province of Leinster. It is named after the town of Wicklow, which derives from the Old Norse name Víkingalág or Wykynlo. Wicklow County Council is the local authority for the county...

, on April 6, 1984.

Works

• Poor Women! (short stories, 1928)
• Time Gentlemen! Time! (1930)
• Violet Ryder (from Poor Women!, 1930)
• Apartments to Let (1931)
• Youth Can't Be Served (1933)
• Holy Ireland (1935)
• Coming from the Fair (1937)
• Nine Years is a Long Time (short stories, 1938)
• Smilin' on the Vine (1939)
• Four Women Grow Up (1940)
• Augusta Steps Out (1942)
• Scene for Death (1943)
• There Were No Windows (1944) (Republished in 2005 by Persephone Books
  Persephone Books
  Persephone Books is an independent publisher based in Bloomsbury, London. Founded in 1999 by Nicola Beauman, Persephone has a catalogue of 93 "neglected novels, diaries, poetry, short stories, non-fiction, biography and cookery books, mostly by women and mostly dating from the early to...
  
  )
• House Under Mars (1946)
• Farewell Happy Fields (1948)
• Cocktail Bar (short stories, 1950)
• Frozen Ground (autobiography, 1952)
• Sister Mavis (1953)
• A Death Occurred (1954)
• Journey Into Print (1954)
• Father Hone and the Television Set (1956)
• Father and Daughter (1957)
• Husband and Wife (1959)
• The Last Days of Miss Jenkinson (1962)
• A Poet's Pilgrimage (1966)
• Only Fools and Horses Work (1969)
• Not For Our Sins Alone (1972)
• Two Girls in the Big Smoke (1977)

External links

• Summary by the Princess Grace Irish Library
  Princess Grace Irish Library
  -Foundation and collections:Opened in November 1984 by Rainier III in honor of Princess Grace's Irish origins, it contains the princess's personal collection of Irish books and Irish-American sheet music.The library was co-founded by the novelist Anthony Burgess....
  
  of Monaco