Maeve Binchy, one of the world's most popular novelists, has died after a short illness.
The 72-year-old author was with her husband, writer Gordon Snell, when she passed away peacefully in a hospital yesterday.
The successful writer sold more than 40 million books worldwide during her career. Several pieces of her works were adapted for also screen, including the Circle Of Friends, The Lilac Bus and Tara Road.
Born in Dalkey south Co Dublin, Binchy studied at University College Dublin before starting her career as a teacher.
She went on to become a journalist, columnist and later, women's editor, at the Irish Times before she moved to England where she became London editor with the paper.
Her popular early collections of humorous short stories were based in London and Dublin.
But Binchy's novels also touched on poignant issues such as parent-child relationships and the illusion of love.
Her first novel, Light and Penny Candle, was published in 1982 and became a best seller.
Binchy, who was considered a true Irish storyteller, made Britain's top 10 most popular writers and the New York Times' Bestseller List.
She appeared on The Oprah Winfrey Show in 1999 and Tara Road was also chosen in Oprah's Book Club.
Irish politicians paid tribute to the author, who has been described as inspirational.
Meath East TD Regina Doherty took to social network site Twitter to pay her respects.
"Godspeed Maeve Binchy RIP lovely warm gentle lady brought much joy through all her work," said Ms Doherty.
Meanwhile, Fine Gael's Jerry Buttimer tweeted that he was "so sad" to hear of her passing.
While Binchy announced her retirement in 2000, she continued writing. Her last novel, Minding Frankie, was published in 2010 - the same year she received a lifetime achievement award from the Irish Book Awards.
In a personal message on her website when Minding Frankie was released in the US, she thanked her fans who had said they'd enjoyed it.
"My health isn't so good these days and I can't travel around to meet people the way I used to. But I'm always delighted to hear from readers, even if it takes me a while to reply," she wrote.
Why are you making commenting on The Herald only available to subscribers?
It should have been a safe space for informed debate, somewhere for readers to discuss issues around the biggest stories of the day, but all too often the below the line comments on most websites have become bogged down by off-topic discussions and abuse.
heraldscotland.com is tackling this problem by allowing only subscribers to comment.
We are doing this to improve the experience for our loyal readers and we believe it will reduce the ability of trolls and troublemakers, who occasionally find their way onto our site, to abuse our journalists and readers. We also hope it will help the comments section fulfil its promise as a part of Scotland's conversation with itself.
We are lucky at The Herald. We are read by an informed, educated readership who can add their knowledge and insights to our stories.
That is invaluable.
We are making the subscriber-only change to support our valued readers, who tell us they don't want the site cluttered up with irrelevant comments, untruths and abuse.
In the past, the journalist’s job was to collect and distribute information to the audience. Technology means that readers can shape a discussion. We look forward to hearing from you on heraldscotland.com
Comments & Moderation
Readers’ comments: You are personally liable for the content of any comments you upload to this website, so please act responsibly. We do not pre-moderate or monitor readers’ comments appearing on our websites, but we do post-moderate in response to complaints we receive or otherwise when a potential problem comes to our attention. You can make a complaint by using the ‘report this post’ link . We may then apply our discretion under the user terms to amend or delete comments.
Post moderation is undertaken full-time 9am-6pm on weekdays, and on a part-time basis outwith those hours.
Read the rules hereComments are closed on this article