Raised in Cork, he was the only child of Minnie (née O'Connor) and Michael O'Donovan.[1] He attended Saint Patrick’s School on Gardiner's Hill. One teacher, Daniel Corkery, introduced O'Connor's class to the Irish language and poetry and deeply influenced the young pupil.[2] He later attended North Monastery Christian Brothers School.
O'Connor's early life was marked by his father's alcoholism, debt, and ill-treatment of his mother. His childhood was strongly shaped by his mother, who supplied much of the family's income by cleaning houses, his father being unable to keep steady employment due to alcoholism. O'Connor adored his mother and was bitterly resentful of his father. In his memoirs, he recalled his childhood as "those terrible years",[3] and admitted that he had never been able to forgive his father for his abuse of himself and his mother.[4] When his mother was seventy, O'Connor was horrified to learn from his own doctor that she had suffered for years from chronic appendicitis, which she had endured with great stoicism, as she had never had the time nor the money to see a doctor.[5]
