Women Writers of the Catholic Literary Revival in England and Ireland: An Argument for Revaluation

Julia Meszaros The large-scale socio-cultural and political shifts of the late nineteenth century are reflected in the era’s vibrant literary culture. In Britain and Ireland, the years between 1860 and 1960 saw a particularly dynamic literary resurgence among Catholic writers. Catholic emancipation, marked by…

Emerging Voices 3: Tara Giddens

Tara Giddens’ PhD project, ‘Investigating the Irish New Woman: Journalists in Media and Fiction’, offers exciting new research into Irish women’s contributions to popular culture and journalism. Focusing on the journalistic and literary careers of Kathleen Coleman, Charlotte O’Conor Eccles and L. T. Meade,…

The Dreamwork of a Nation: From Virginia Woolf to Elizabeth Bowen to Mary Lavin

Patricia Laurence For a more detailed reading of this subject matter, see Laurence’s chapter ‘The Dreamwork of a Nation: From Virginia Woolf to Elizabeth Bowen to Mary Lavin’ in  ‘The Edinburgh Companion to Virginia Woolf and Contemporary Global Literature (2021),  Edited by Jeanne Dubino, Paulina Pająk, Catherine…

Emerging Voices 2: Shirley-Anne Godfrey

Shirley-Anne Godfrey is an emerging Irish playwright, currently researching how drama and theatre can be used as methodologies in rehabilitating the literary legacies of Lady Augusta Gregory (1852-1932) and Frances Browne (1816-1879) for her PhD at NUI Galway. Funded by the Irish Research Council,…

Research Pioneers 3: James H. Murphy

From the period of his earliest publications, James H. Murphy has been involved in the process of recovering and re-examining largely forgotten Irish works. As one reviewer noted of his Catholic Fiction and Social Reality in Ireland, 1873-1922 (1997), Murphy’s work is consistently the…

An Appreciation of Winifred Letts

“An Appreciation of Winifred Letts” [1] Dr. David Clare, Mary Immaculate College, UL   Winifred Letts was born in Salford, in what is now Greater Manchester, in 1882 to an English vicar father and an Irish mother. As a child, she greatly enjoyed the…

Truth or Dare: Martina Devlin shares the introduction of her new book

Leaders. Rebels. Pioneers. Short stories about some of Ireland’s trailblazing women by award-winning writer Martina Devlin. In this collection we encounter Countess Markievicz back from the dead to cast a disapproving eye over modern Ireland, Hanna Sheehy Skeffington on hunger strike in jail, and Somerville and Ross discussing book…

Noêlle Ffrench Davies: A Transnational Irish Polymath

S Morgan Dr. Noēlle Davies (1889-1983), née Ffrench, of Mount Talbot, Co. Roscommon, was a 20th Century intellectual, educationist, litterateur and political activist across Ireland, Wales, Denmark and Europe. Her story is largely unexplored. Using transnational sources, we can trace and assemble her 50…

“Which is Kit?”: Discovering Kathleen Blake Coleman

By Tara Giddens, University of Limerick   I was first introduced to Kathleen Blake Coleman (1856-1915) by my supervisor when discussing PhD topics. Coleman was an eminent journalist in Canada and the United States at the end of the nineteenth and early twentieth century. …