About Eilis Dillon

Eilís Dillon FRSL (7 March 1920 – 19 July 1994) was an Irish author of 50 books. Her work has been translated into 14 languages.

Dillon was the third of five children of Professor Thomas Dillon and his wife Geraldine née Plunkett, who was the sister of Joseph Mary Plunkett. She was raised at Dangan House outside of Galway City before moving to the small fishing village of Barna. She attended the local primary school where she became proficient in Irish and gained an intimate knowledge of Connemara traditions.[2] Dillon's family was involved in Irish revolutionary politics; her uncle Joseph Mary Plunkett was a signatory of the 1916 Proclamation and was executed after the Easter Rising.[1]

Educated by the Ursuline nuns in Sligo, she worked briefly in the hotel and catering trade. In 1940 she married Cormac Ó Cuilleanáin, an academic from University College Cork and 17 years her senior.[1] They had three children: the Irish poet and Trinity College Dublin professor Eiléan Ní Chuilleanáin, Máire Ní Chuilleanáin, violinist with the London Philharmonic Orchestra who died in 1990, and Cormac Ó Cuilleanáin, also a Trinity professor, who writes novels as Cormac Millar