Alice Taylor

Alice Taylor lives in the village of Innishannon in County Cork, in a house attached to the local supermarket and post office. Since her eldest son has taken over responsibility for the shop, she has been able to devote more time to her writing.

Alice Taylor worked as a telephonist in Killarney and Bandon. When she married, she moved to Innishannon where she ran a guesthouse at first, then the supermarket and post office. She and her husband, Gabriel Murphy, who sadly passed away in 2005, had four sons and one daughter. In 1984 she edited and published the first issue of Candlelight, a local magazine which has since appeared annually. In 1986 she published an illustrated collection of her own verse.

To School Through the Fields was published by Brandon in May 1988. It was an immediate success, launching Alice on a series of signing sessions, talks and readings the length and breadth of Ireland. Her first radio interview — forty two minutes long on RTÉ Radio's Gay Byrne Show — was the most talked about radio programme of 1988, and her first television interview, of the same length, was the highlight of the year on RTÉ television's Late Late Show. Since then she has appeared on radio programmes such as Woman's Hour, Midweek and The Gloria Hunniford Show, and she has been the subject of major profiles in the Observer and the Mail on Sunday.

To School Through the Fields quickly became the biggest selling book ever published in Ireland, and her sequels, Quench the Lamp, The Village, Country Days and The Night Before Christmas, were also outstandingly successful. Since their initial publication these books of memoirs have also been translated and sold internationally.

In 1997 her first novel, The Woman of the House, was published by Mount Eagle and was an immediate bestseller in Ireland, topping the paperback fiction lists for many weeks. A moving story of land, love and family, it was followed by a sequel, Across the River in 2000, which was also a bestseller. In spring 1998 Going to the Well, her third collection of poetry, was published, and A Country Miscellany, a collection of her writings about aspects of country life, illustrated in colour with photographs by Richard T. Mills, was published in autumn 1998.

"Ireland's Laurie Lee... a chronicler of fading village life and rural rituals who sells and sells." Observer

"In Ireland, where scribblers are ten a penny, she has become the most popular and universally loved author in memory." Mail on Sunday

"There is no writer more full of the milk of human kindness." Books Ireland