Seán O'Faoláin was born in Cork, he was educated at the National University of Ireland and at Harvard University.

Ninety of his short stories, unsparing pictures of life in modern Ireland, written between 1932 and 1976, were published in Collected Stories (1983).

O'Faoláin's critical writing concerns such matters as censorship by the Irish church and the cultural and social problems faced by the Irish people, past and present.