Molly Keane (20 July 1904 – 22 April 1996),[1] née Mary Nesta Skrine, and who also wrote as M. J. Farrell, was an Irish novelist and playwright.
[3][4][2] Keane grew up at Ballyrankin House beside the River Slaney, a few miles south east of Bunclody, County Wexford[5] and refused to go to boarding school in England as her siblings had done.
Keane claimed she had never set out to be a writer, but at seventeen she was bedbound due to suspected tuberculosis, and turned to writing out of sheer boredom.
This, with her wit and astute sense of what lay beneath the surface of people's actions, enabled her to depict the world of the big houses of Ireland in the 1920s and 1930s.
In 1981 Good Behaviour came out under her own name; the manuscript, which had languished in a drawer for many years, was lent to a visitor, the actress Peggy Ashcroft, who encouraged Keane to publish it.
[2] After the death of her husband in 1946, Molly moved to Ardmore, County Waterford, a place she knew well, and lived there with her two daughters.
It connected her in a personal way with the famous London editor, Diana Athill, who identified strongly with Keane after reading it, insisted on editing it herself, later calling the book "mindblowingly clever.
"[11] Although the real identity of M. J. Farrell had long since become known in Irish and English literary circles, it was not until Good Behaviour that Keane felt secure in publishing under her own name.