Maura Laverty

Maura wrote several books and was a journalist. She was also famous for writing Tolka Row, the first soap opera on Irish Televsion, about a working class family. She was an agony aunt and was the chief breadwinner in her household, since her husband James Laverty, was not good at making money. Her marriage to him ended in separation but she continued to earn a living with her writing. Like Delia Scully she wss one of a large family, and was brought up partly by her grandmother. The earlier novel, Never No More, is about Delia's life in the Bog of Allen, in the care of her grandmother. The book is rather sentimental, its about Ireland in the 1910s and 20s, and Delia's grandmother is a rather idealised figure. But its a warm memoir of a past time. Afterwards Maura went to Spain as a governess but like Delia she gave it up and became a secretary to the socialite and writer Princess Bibesco. Then she married and had children. She was distressed when some of her works were banned in Ireland by a rigid censorship. She was a conventional woman and while not a rigid Catholic, she found it upsetting that books which were admired by Catholic associations in America, were banned in her own country. I prefer No More than Human about the young adult Delia, to the more sentimental Never No More.