Anne Maeve Binchy Snell (28 May 1939[1] – 30 July 2012) was an Irish novelist, playwright, short story writer, columnist, and speaker.

[8] Recognised for her "total absence of malice"[9] and generosity to other writers, she finished third in a 2000 poll for World Book Day, ahead of Jane Austen, Charles Dickens, and Stephen King.

Educated at St Anne's (then located at No 35 Clarinda Park East), Dún Laoghaire, and later at Holy Child Killiney,[12] she went on to study at University College Dublin (where she earned a bachelor's degree in history).

She later said to Vulture: In 1963, I worked in a Jewish school in Dublin, teaching French with an Irish accent to kids, primarily Lithuanians.

[16][20]One Sunday, attempting to locate where the Last Supper is supposed to have occurred, she climbed a mountainside to a cavern guarded by a Brooklyn-born Israeli soldier.

"[22] However, when recording a piece for Woman's Hour in London she met children's author Gordon Snell, then a freelance producer with the BBC.

[5] Files in Ireland's National Archives, released to the public in 2006, feature a request from Maeve Binchy to President Cearbhall Ó Dálaigh asking if he could "receive" her.

The book, about what Binchy terms "a heart failure clinic" in Dublin and the people involved with it, reflects many of her own experiences and observations in the hospital.

[27] A month before her death she suffered a severe spinal infection (acute discitis),[1] and she finally succumbed to a heart attack.

[7] Immediate media reports described Binchy as "beloved", "Ireland's most well-known novelist" and the "best-loved writer of her generation".

[5][7] Fellow writers mourned their loss, including Ian Rankin,[28] Jilly Cooper,[29] Anne Rice,[30] and Jeffrey Archer.

"[32] Minister of State at the Department of Health Kathleen Lynch, appearing as a guest on Tonight with Vincent Browne, said Binchy was, for her [Lynch's] money, as worthy an Irish writer as James Joyce or Oscar Wilde, and praised her for selling so many more books than they managed.

[33] In the days after her death, tributes were published from such writers as John Banville,[34] Roddy Doyle,[35] and Colm Tóibín.

[41] Despite being agnostic, Binchy was given a traditional Requiem Mass which took place at the Church of the Assumption, in her hometown of Dalkey.

Her father was so taken with her letters home that "he cut off the 'Dear Daddy' bits," Ms. Binchy later recounted, and sent them to an Irish newspaper, which published them.

As Binchy's bio posted at Read Ireland describes: "The Dublin section of the book contains insightful case histories that prefigure her novelist's interest in character.

[4] While some of Binchy's novels are complete stories (Circle of Friends, Light a Penny Candle), many others revolve around a cast of interrelated characters (The Copper Beech, Silver Wedding, The Lilac Bus, Evening Class, and Heart and Soul).

Her later novels, Evening Class, Scarlet Feather, Quentins, and Tara Road, feature a cast of recurring characters.

Five further novels were published before her death: Quentins (2002), Nights of Rain and Stars (2004), Whitethorn Woods (2006), Heart and Soul (2008), and Minding Frankie (2010).

[13][51] In 2014 a collection of 36 unpublished short stories that she had written over a period of decades was published under the title Chestnut Street.

[54] "Then the conversation broadened and Gay Byrne asked about some aspects of my work, the royal weddings", Binchy later recalled in a letter she sent to the programme.

[54] "I said how much I had liked Charles's wedding and hated Anne's – about covering the election in Ireland and how I had been one of the very few journalists watching FitzGerald and Haughey on the night of the Great Debate..."[54] Following the publication of Light a Penny Candle, the programme sought Binchy to reappear to explain her success.

[54] In advance of her appearance she sent Mary O'Sullivan, who was working on the programme, a letter (the same one referred to above) setting out her earnings in some detail, since Binchy thought this would be of relevance.

[54] O'Sullivan republished the letter in the Sunday Independent's Living supplement in 2020 but mentioned that the last page, which followed on from Binchy referring to what she intended to do with all her money, was missing.

[57] Binchy and her husband had a cameo appearance together in Fair City on 14 December 2011, during which the couple dined in The Hungry Pig.

In 2001, Scarlet Feather won the W H Smith Book Award for Fiction, defeating works by Joanna Trollope and then Booker winner Margaret Atwood, amongst other contenders.