Light a Penny Candle

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Light a Penny Candle is Maeve Binchy’s debut novel, published in 1982. It tells the story of Elizabeth White, an English girl evacuated to Ireland during the Blitz, and her lifelong friendship with Aisling O’Connor, a lively Irish girl. The two girls meet at age ten and remain close as they grow into teenagers and then adults, staying in touch through letters and visits even after Elizabeth returns to London. The book contrasts Catholic Ireland with Protestant London and follows their marriages, families, and personal struggles over many years.

Themes in the novel include friendship, growing up, family, and religion, with other difficult topics such as sexuality, domestic abuse, mental health, and abortion also explored. The title might come from a lyric in the Galway Bay song or from a Catholic devotional practice.

Binchy wrote Light a Penny Candle in 40 weekends during 1981, producing about 240,000 words. Her agent sold it to MacDonalds, which later moved to Century. Binchy refused to include explicit sex scenes, preferring realism drawn from experience and observation. The book became a best seller and helped establish her reputation. It was published in England in September 1982, with translations follow­ing into several languages. In the United States, Viking paid $200,000 for the hardcover edition, and the book was also a Literary Guild main selection, bringing in additional earnings. The novel is widely regarded as one of Binchy’s best-known works.

A stage adaptation directed by Peter Sheridan premiered in 2019 at the Gaiety Theatre in Dublin and at the Everyman Theatre in Cork.