Joseph O'Neill was an Irish novelist. O'Neill claimed later in his life that he was born in the Aran Islands, County Galway, Ireland, in 1886, but he was in fact born in the inland Galway town of Tuam, preferring, as a writer, the perceived romance of being born in the [Gaelic] speaking islands. He became a school inspector and subsequently Secretary of the Department of Education in the newly formed Irish Free State. He wrote five novels, of which the best-known was Land Under England, a science-fiction account of a totalitarian society ruled by telepathic mind control. The novel combines elements of a lost race narrative with fears of totalitarian control. Land Under England has an anti-fascist subtext. The novel was cited by Karl Edward Wagner as one of the thirteen best science-fiction horror novels. His other SF novel, published in 1936, is the future-war story Day of Wrath. His other novels include the time-travel 

December 18th, 1878 in County Galway  /  Died:   1953