Eilis Dillon was a prominent Irish author, born on March 7, 1920, in Galway, Ireland. She was the third child of Thomas and Geraldine Dillon, with her mother being the sister of the famous poet Joseph M. Plunkett. Dillon was brought up outside Galway and later moved to a small village called Barna, where she received her primary education from a local school and learned Irish very well.
Dillon's literary career was marked by her prolific writing, having penned more than 50 books, which have been translated into over 14 foreign languages. She was particularly famous for writing children's books and teenage mystery novels, including the Inspector Kenny Mystery series and numerous standalone books. Dillon also wrote several picture books, chapter books, and nonfiction books, and even edited an anthology called Book of Wise Animals.
Eilis Dillon was born into a family with a rich cultural background. Her father, Thomas Dillon, was a chemistry professor at University College Galway, while her mother, Geraldine Plunkett, was the sister of the poet Joseph Mary Plunkett, one of the seven signatories of the Proclamation of the Irish Republic. Dillon was educated at the Ursuline Convent in Sligo and was sent to work in the hotel and catering business in Dublin.
In 1940, at the age of 20, Dillon married a 37-year-old Corkman named Cormac Ó Cuilleanáin. Her husband became Professor of Irish at University College Cork, and Dillon had always written poetry and stories. In the intervals of bringing up three children and running a student hostel for the university, she developed her writing into a highly successful professional career. Dillon started to write children's books in Irish and English, then moved on to writing novels and detective stories. Over twenty of her books were published by Faber and Faber, winning critical acclaim and a wide readership. Her work was translated into fourteen languages.
In the 1960s, Dillon's husband's poor health prompted early retirement and a move to Rome. He died in 1970. Dillon's large historical novel about the road to Irish independence in the 19th and early 20th centuries, Across the Bitter Sea, was published in 1973 by Hodder & Stoughton in London and Simon & Schuster in New York. It became an instant bestseller. In 1974, Dillon married Vivian Mercier, Professor of English in the University of Colorado at Boulder. They moved to California when Vivian was appointed to a chair in the University of California, Santa Barbara. They spent each winter in California until Vivian's retirement in 1987, returning to Ireland for the spring and summer.
Dillon was active in a number of public and cultural bodies. She served on the Arts Council, the International Commission for English in the Liturgy, the Irish Writers' Union and the Irish Writers' Centre. She was a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature, and a member of Aosdána, the State academy of writers, artists and composers. She had long argued for the establishment of such a body.
Despite facing personal losses and declining health, Dillon kept writing until the last months of her own life. An honorary doctorate was conferred on her by University College Cork in 1992. Her last two published works were Children of Bach (1993), a children's novel set in Hungary at the time of the Holocaust, and her edition of Vivian Mercier's posthumous Modern Irish Literature: Sources and Founders (Oxford, 1994). Her scholarly work on this book meant that her own last novel remained unfinished.
Eilis Dillon died on 19 July 1994. Of her fifty books, ten are now in print and others will shortly be republished. A special prize, the Eilís Dillon Award, is given each year as part of the Bisto Book Awards. She herself had won the main Bisto Book of the Year award in 1989 with The Island of Ghosts.