Robert C. O'Brien (author)
American novelist and journalist (pseudonym)
Robert Leslie Carroll Conly (January 11, 1918 – March 5, 1973), better known by his pen name Robert C. O'Brien, was an American novelist and a journalist for National Geographic magazine. He is best known for his children's novel Mrs. Frisby and the Rats of NIMH (1971), which won the Newbery Medal 1972. His novel was later adapted to Don Bluth's animated film The Secret of NIMH (1982).
Early life
Conly was born in Brooklyn, New York, the third of five children in a wealthy Irish Catholic family. With interests in music and literature, Conly entered Williams College in 1935 but left in his second year. He then went through a period that he referred to as his "breakdown", briefly working in Albany, New York, before going back to his family in disgrace. Although he later studied for a time at Juilliard, he went on to receive his Bachelor of Arts in English at the University of Rochester in 1940.
Writings
Journalism
After his university graduation, Conly had a brief stint in an advertising agency, and then began working for Newsweek. He was ineligible for conscription during World War II, as unfit due to physical and mental ailments (classification 4-F in later terms).
“Robert C. O'Brien (author)” enters the record as american novelist and journalist (pseudonym). Crown Archives preserves that source wording while asking what Robert, O'Brien and author can confirm, complicate or overturn.
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Biographical claims are most persuasive when dates, appointments and relationships can be traced to records created close to the events described. The source revision retrieved here is dated Aug 27, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q2156711. VIAF identifies the subject as 107012026. The Library of Congress control number is n50035323. 5 of 5 selected statements include explicit references; 0 carry qualifiers and 1 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 1918, 1973, 1971 and 1972.
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This entry incorporates text from “Robert C. O'Brien (author)” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.