A History of Modern Irish Women's Literature

This book offers the first comprehensive survey of writing by women in Ireland from the seventeenth century to the present day. It covers literature in all genres, including poetry, drama, and fiction, as well as life-writing and unpublished writing, and addresses work in both English and Irish. The chapters are authored by leading experts in their field, giving readers an introduction to cutting edge research on each period and topic. Survey chapters give an essential historical overview, and are complemented by a focus on selected topics such as the short story, and key figures whose relationship to the narrative of Irish literary history is analysed and reconsidered. Demonstrating the pioneering achievements of a huge number of many hitherto neglected writers, A History of Modern Irish Women's Literature makes a critical intervention in Irish literary history.

Introduction Heather Ingman and Clíona Ó Gallchoir; 1. Writing before 1700 Marie-Louise Coolahan; 2. Eighteenth-century writing Clíona Ó Gallchoir; 3. Writing under the Union, 1800–45 James Kelly; 4. Poetry, 1845–90 Matthew Campbell; 5. Fiction, 1845–1900 James H. Murphy; 6. New woman writers Tina O'Toole; 7. Prose, drama and poetry, 1891–1920 Paige Reynolds; 8. Writing for children Valerie Coghlan; 9. Poetry, 1920–1970 Lucy Collins; 10. Fiction, 1920–60 Gerardine Meaney; 11. Elizabeth Bowen Patricia Coughlan; 12. Kate O'Brien Eibhear Walshe; 13. Edna O'Brien Sinéad Mooney; 14. Fiction, 1960–95 Anne Fogarty; 15. The short story Heather Ingman; 16. Poetry, 1970-present Patricia Boyle Haberstroh; 17. Women's traditions in theatre, 1920–2015 Cathy Leeney; 18. Writing in Irish, 1900–2013 Ríona Nic Congáil and Máirín Nic Eoin; 19. Fiction from Northern Ireland, 1921–2015 Caroline Magennis; 20. Life writing and personal testimony in the twentieth century Anne Mulhall; 21. Twentieth-century diasporic and transnational writing Ellen McWilliams; 22. Celtic tiger fiction Susan Cahill.

Heather Ingman is Visiting Research Fellow in the Centre for Gender and Women's Studies in Trinity College Dublin where she was previously Adjunct Professor in the School of English, teaching and researching in modernist women's fiction, the short story and Irish women's writing. Her publications include Irish Women's Fiction from Edgeworth to Enright (2013), A History of the Irish Short Story (Cambridge, 2009), Twentieth-Century Fiction by Irish Women: Nation and Gender (2007), Women's Fiction Between the Wars: Mothers, Daughters and Writing (1998). She has chapters in recent edited collections on Mary Lavin, Virginia Woolf, and Elizabeth Bowen. She is currently researching ageing in Irish writing.
Clíona Ó Gallchoir is a lecturer in the School of English at University College Cork. Her research focuses on Irish writing in the long eighteenth century, women's writing, and children's literature. Her publications include Maria Edgeworth: Women, Enlightenment and Nation (2005), and numerous articles and book chapters on figures such as Sydney Owenson, Germaine de Stael and Harriet Beecher Stowe. She is currently one of the editors of the journal Eighteenth-Century Ireland and the Secretary of the International Association for the Study of Irish Literatures. She has held research fellowships at the Institute for Advanced Study in the Humanities at Edinburgh University and at the Moore Institute in National University of Ireland Galway, and in autumn 2018 she will be the Peter O'Brien Visiting Scholar in Canadian Irish Studies at Concordia University in Montreal.