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Amy Prendergast BA (NUI Galway); MA (Queen’s University Belfast); PhD (TCD) Assistant Professor in Eighteenth-Century Writing

Research and Teaching Interests

My research expertise in the long eighteenth century centres on the areas of women’s writing, life writing, writing from Ireland, and Franco-Irish connections and cultural transfers.

Before returning to TCD as Assistant Professor, I held a Marie Skłodowska-Curie Individual Research Fellowship at Queen’s University Belfast.

My second monograph, Textuality, Place, and the Self: Women’s Diaries from Ireland 1760-1810, is under contract with Liverpool University Press, and will be published as an open access work. Engaging with overlooked archival diaries by women across Ireland, it opens new avenues concerning authorship and female agency, transforming our understanding of women’s contributions to literature and cultural movements. The entirely new corpus allows for the emergence of new perspectives on the self during the period and prompts a re-evaluation of the contours of Irish writing.

My first monograph was completed during an IRC Postdoctoral Fellowship held at TCD. Literary Salons Across Britain and Ireland in the Long Eighteenth Century(Palgrave, 2015) offered the first detailed examination of the literary salon in Ireland, considered in the wider contexts of contemporary salon culture in Britain and France. I was also co-editor of The Diary and Accounts of Élie Bouhéreau(Irish Manuscripts Commission, 2019), which I worked on during my time as a Research Associate at Marsh’s Library.
Recent articles have appeared in The European Journal for Life Writing (2021); Life Writing (2020); and Women’s Writing (2020). In addition to my large-scale research projects, I have contributed to various edited collections, including several from Cambridge University Press, and am Section Editor on Elizabeth Vesey for Elizabeth Montagu Correspondence Online.
I am the current Secretary of the Eighteenth-Century Ireland Society.

I am committed to public engagement, and particularly seek to incorporate gender dimensions into my research and celebrate the achievements of women.

I welcome enquiries from all looking to work on any aspect of the long eighteenth century, and particularly encourage proposals from those seeking to work under the research areas listed above. General information on postgraduate research and supervision at TCD can be found here: https://www.tcd.ie/English/postgraduate/research-students/

Publications

Books

Textuality, Place, and the Self: Women’s Diaries from Ireland, 1760–1810 (Under contract with Liverpool University Press, forthcoming 2024).
Literary Salons Across Britain and Ireland in the Long Eighteenth Century (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2015).
Marie Léoutre, Jean-Paul Pittion, Jane McKee, and Amy Prendergast, eds. The Diary and Accounts of Elias Bouhéreau (Dublin: Irish Manuscripts Commission, 2019).

Articles in peer-reviewed journals:

‘Glossing the Diary: Women Writing for Posterity, the Case of Elizabeth Edgeworth (1780–1800).’ Life Writing (2022) available online: https://doi.org/10.1080/14484528.2020.1803537)
‘A Winter in Bath, 1796-97: Life Writing and the Irish Adolescent Self.’ European Journal of Life Writing 10 (2021): 18–40.

‘“Open[ing] the flood-gate of literature to her own Sex”: Elizabeth Griffith, translation, transmission and cultural transfer.’ Women’s Writing 27.2 (2020): 184–202.
‘“Members of the republick of letters”: Maria Edgeworth, literary sociability and intellectual pursuits in the Irish midlands, c. 1780–1820.’ Eighteenth-Century Ireland 31 (2016): 27–44.
‘“The drooping genius of our Isle to raise”: the Moira House salon and its role in Gaelic cultural revival.’ Eighteenth-Century Ireland 26 (2011): 95–114.

Peer-reviewed book chapters:

‘France and French Writing.’ Oliver Goldsmith in Context. Ed. David O’Shaughnessy and Michael Griffith (Cambridge University Press, 2023).
‘The Envoy’s Wife: Diplomatic Sociability, Family, and Loss in the Diary of Élie Bouhéreau.’ Élie Bouhéreau and the World of the Huguenots. Ed. Amy Boylan and Janée Allsman (Forthcoming, 2024).
‘Transnational influence and exchange: the intersections between Irish and French sentimental novels.’ Irish Literature in Transition, Vol. I, 1700–1780. Ed. Moyra Haslett (Cambridge University Press, 2020).

Electronic Publications, encyclopaedia entries, and shorter articles:

Section Editor on Elizabeth Vesey for Elizabeth Montagu Correspondence Online (EMCO) emco.swansea.ac.uk (2023–24).
5 Entries on Anne Burke and Frances Peck in The Cambridge Guide to the Eighteenth-Century Novel, 1660–1820. Ed. April London (Forthcoming, Cambridge University Press, 2023).
‘Irish literary salons of the long eighteenth century.’ The Literary Encyclopedia. April 2013.

Reviews:

Reviews of monographs and scholarly editions for Romantic Textualities: Literature and Print Culture; Books Ireland; H–Net Reviews; Irish Journal of Gothic and Horror Stories; Eighteenth-Century Ireland.