Molly Keane (1905 - April 22, 1996) was an Irish novelist and playwright (born Mary Nesta Skrine in Ryston Cottage,Newbridge, County Kildare). She grew up at Ballyrankin in County Wexford and was educated at a boarding school in Bray, County Wicklow . She married Bobby Keane, one of a Waterford squirearchical family in 1938 and had two daughters. She used her married name for her later novels, several of which (Good Behaviour, Time After Time) have been adapted for television. Between 1928 and 1956, she wrote 11 novels, and some of her earlier plays, under the pseudonym M.J. Farrell. Molly was a member of Aosdána. When her husband died in 1961, she didn't write again for twenty years. In 1981 she wrote Good Behaviour under her own name; the novel was short-listed for the Man Booker Prize.
After the death of her husband, Molly Keane moved to Ardmore, County Waterford, a place she knew well, and lived there with her two daughters, Sally and Virginia, until she died in 1996. She is buried beside the Church of Ireland church, almost in the centre of the village.