Emily Hourican

Emily Hourican is an Irish journalist and novelist whose work ranges from contemporary fiction and memoir to historical novels based on prominent families. The Glorious Guinness Girls, published in 2020, is inspired by Aileen, Maureen, and Oonagh Guinness, society figures whose lives unfolded between Dublin and London during the 1920s. Hourican tells the story through Fliss, a fictional companion who grows up alongside the sisters and sees the tensions beneath their public glamour. The novel sets family loyalty and privilege against the Irish War of Independence, civil conflict, and the changing expectations placed on women. Hourican spent many years writing features for the Sunday Independent and contributed to magazines before moving into books. Earlier publications include a memoir and the novels The Privileged, White Villa, The Outsider, and The Blame. She later carried the Guinness narrative into the 1930s, using invented characters to connect documented lives with broader political and social experience. The Glorious Guinness Girls began that historical sequence.