Biography
Amy Prendergast is Assistant Professor in Eighteenth-Century Studies in the School of English. She previously held the positions of Marie Sklodowska-Curie Research Fellow at Queen's University Belfast, and Irish Research Council Postdoctoral Fellow and Teaching Fellow at TCD.
Her research expertise in the long eighteenth century centres on women's writing, life writing, writing from Ireland, and Franco-Irish connections and cultural transfers.
Prendergast is author of two monographs, Mere Bagatelles: Women's Diaries from Ireland, 1760-1810 (Liverpool University Press, 2024), and Literary Salons Across Britain and Ireland in the Long Eighteenth Century (Palgrave, 2015). Mere Bagatelles, which won Honorable Mention for Robert Rhodes Prize for Books on Literature, is fully open access on OAPEN Library.
Prendergast is co-editor of a special issue of the fully refereed international journal, Women's Writing. This will be the journal's first special issue dedicated to Irish writers.
Prendergast is committed to public engagement, and particularly seeks to incorporate gender dimensions into her research and to celebrate the achievements of women writers. She is currently working on the project, MARGINS, `Writing from the Margins: Irish Women's Narratives from the Long Eighteenth Century', for which she has received TRDA PI-led funding. MARGINS prioritises women's life writing `from below', including oral testimonies and ephemera, as well as biographies, memoirs, and letters.
From 2021-2025, Prendergast served as Secretary of Eighteenth-Century Ireland Society, and was co-organiser of the 2025 annual ECIS conference. Within the School, Prendergast has served as Undergraduate Coordinator since 2024 and was previously Head of Freshers.
Publications and Further Research Outputs
Peer-Reviewed Publications
The Envoy's Wife: Diplomatic Sociability, Family, and Loss in the Diary (1689-1719) of Élie Bouhéreau in, editor(s)Amy Boylan and Janée Allsman , Élie Bouhéreau The collections and communities of a Huguenot refugee, 2025, [Amy Prendergast]
France and French Writing in, editor(s)Michael Griffin and David O'Shaughnessy , Oliver Goldsmith in Context, 2024, [Amy Prendergast]
Amy Prendergast, Mere Bagatelles: Women's Diaries from Ireland, 1760-1810, UK, Liverpool University Press, 2024, 1 - 256pp
Prendergast, Amy, Glossing the Diary: Women Writing for Posterity, the Case of Elizabeth Edgeworth (1781-1800), Life Writing, 19, (2), 2022, p277-294
Prendergast, Amy, A Winter in Bath, 1796-97: Life Writing and the Irish Adolescent Self, European Journal of Life Writing, 10, 2021, p18-40
Transnational Influence and Exchange: The Intersections between Irish and French Sentimental Novels in, Cambridge University Press, 2020, pp189-206 , [Prendergast, Amy]
Prendergast, Amy, "Open[ing] the Flood-gate of literature to her own Sex": Elizabeth Griffith, translation, transmission, and cultural transfer, Women's Writing, 27, (2), 2020, p184-202
The diary (1689-1719) and accounts (1704-1717) of Élie Bouhéreau, Marie Léoutre, Jane McKee, Jean-Paul Pittion & Amy Prendergast, Dublin:, IMC, 2019, -
Amy Prendergast, Review of Women of Letters, Manuscript Circulation, and Print After- lives in the Eighteenth Century: Elizabeth Rowe, Catherine Cockburn, and Elizabeth Carter, by Melanie Bigold , Romantic Textualities: Literature and Print Culture, 1780"1840, 22, 2017, p136-138
PRENDERGAST, AMY, `Members of the republick of letters": Maria Edgeworth, literary sociability, and intellectual pursuits in the Irish midlands, c.1780-1820, Eighteenth-Century Ireland, 31, (1), 2016, p29-46
Amy Prendergast, Literary Salons Across Britain and Ireland in the Long Eighteenth Century, 2015
Amy Prendergast, Review of Selena by Mary Tighe, A Scholarly Edition, by Harriet Kramer Linkin , Eighteenth-Century Ireland / Iris an dá chultúr, 28, 2013, p202-203
Irish literary salons of the long eighteenth century, The Literary Encyclopedia, 2013, [Amy Prendergast ]
Amy Prendergast, 'The drooping genius of our Isle to raise': the Moira House salon and its role in Gaelic cultural revival, Eighteenth-Century Ireland, 26, 2011, p95 - 114
Non-Peer-Reviewed Publications
Amy Prendergast, Rational Creatures, Dublin Review of Books, 2024
Dr Brandon Yen and Amy Prendergast, 'Ireland and the English Lake Poets', 2019, -
Amy Prendergast, Maria Edgeworth at 250, Books Ireland, (377), 2018, p23-
Amy Prendergast, Review of Brown, Michael, The Irish Enlightenment., Review of The Irish Enlightenment, by Michael Brown , H-Albion, H-Net Reviews, 2016
Research Expertise
Description
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. My second monograph, Mere Bagatelles: Women's Diaries from Ireland 1760-1810, was published in Liverpool University Press in October 2024. It is a fully open access work, available to download from the publisher website and from the OAPEN library. 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. Amy Culley (University of Lincoln) described it as being 'meticulously researched and the extensive archival material is sensitively and skilfully interpreted to provide rare insights regarding women"s lives and 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. It was positively reviewed in European Romantic Review; The British Association for Romantic Studies Review; Journal for Eighteenth Century Studies; New Perspectives on the Eighteenth Century; Reviews in History; Eighteenth-Century Ireland. Eric Gidal, European Romantic Review, wrote, `Prendergast brings an impressive amount of archival research to bear upon the story she tells, and anyone seeking to understand how salon culture crossed the Irish Sea will need to consult this work', and Rebecca Bar, Eighteenth-Century Ireland, that `In its sensitive recuperation of a past that is neglected and, at times, seemingly deliberately obliterated, Literary Salons Across Britain and Ireland will be of interest to Irish historians and literary scholars alike.' I am currently co-editor, with Lucy Cogan (UCD) of a special issue of the journal, Women's Writing. This will be the first special issue of Women's Writing dedicated to Irish writers, and we have curated submissions on innovative topics from the early modern period to the early-twentieth century. I was 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. It has been described as 'an impressively translated and edited edition which is also handsomely produced' wherein 'Readers will appreciate the high quality of the translation, editing, annotation and indexing.' (Martin Greene, Dublin Review of Books). 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 one from Four Courts Press.Projects
- Title
- MARGINS: Writing from the Margins: Irish Women's Narratives from the Long Eighteenth Century
- Summary
- This project centres on the rich and extensive body of life writing produced by Irish women from 1690 to 1810. Life writing relates to ostensibly non-fictional writings about people's own lives, their memories, and lived experiences. MARGINS strives towards inclusivity, and the source material will incorporate life writing by women of all ages and all religious denominations. Focusing on life writing allows marginalised voices to be recentred. MARGINS prioritises life writing `from below", including oral testimonies and ephemera, as well as biographies, memoirs, and letters. It explores texts that have previously been overlooked and neglected, whether prose prefaces to the poetry of labouring class women or gallows speeches recorded on broadsides. MARGINS champions life writing by those whose voices are often forgotten, including `fallen' women, domestic servants, sex workers, and those charged with criminal offences. The corpus of material is vast, and the project will be divided into two work packages. The Principal Investigator will continue her focus on memoirs, while the PhD student will engage with the other forms of life writing, guided by the PI. Gender is at the core of this project, being central to its research objectives, outputs, and aims. The project actively contributes to the UN Sustainable Development Goal of achieving gender equality and empowering all women and girls. Engagement with life writing is key to our understanding of women and girls" participation in manuscript culture and literary culture more broadly. MARGINS contributes towards enhancing TCD"s local and global social and sustainability ambitions through its key outputs: 1. Doctoral thesis on Irish women's life writing from the margins 2. Establishment of a Life Writing Network at TCD 3. International conference on life writing by underrepresented individuals and communities 4. An edited collection on women"s life writing from the margins, arising from output 3, with PhD candidate and PI chapters within this 5. Workshops for advanced primary school pupils from DEIS schools, in collaboration with Marsh's Library Through this intersectoral collaboration with Marsh's Library, MARGINS will provide pupils with the opportunity to learn about women and girls' life writing from earlier periods, and also to produce their own stories as a form of empowerment. Given the ongoing crises in gender rights at a global level, interventions in the enhancement of young women and girls' relationship with their cultural and literary heritage are both timely and urgent.
- Funding Agency
- Trinity Research Doctorate Award
- Date From
- 2025
- Date To
- 2029
- Title
- DIARIES: Textuality, Place, and the Self: Reimagining Life Writing through Women"s Diaries from Ireland, 1725-1810
- Funding Agency
- European Commission H2020
Recognition
Representations
Peer reviewer for Cultural and Social History, Eighteenth-Century Ireland, Eighteenth-Century Fiction, Proceedings of the Royal Irish Academy, Review of Irish Studies in Europe (RISE), Renaissance Studies.
Expert reader for proposed titles for Oxford University Press and Boydell & Brewer.
Secretary of Eighteenth-Century Ireland Society
Member of review committee for ECIS Postgraduate and Early Career Scholar Bursary
External Examiner for Doctoral thesis, University of Melbourne.
Editorial board member for the Élie Bouhéreau Diary project, Marsh's Library, Dublin.
Member of Prize Jury for ASECS Elias Irish-American Fellowship
Awards and Honours
Honorable Mention for Robert Rhodes Prize for Books on Literature (ACIS) for Mere Bagatlles
Marie Sklodowska Curie (MSCA) Individual Fellowship
American Society Eighteenth-Century Studies, Elias Irish-American Fellowship
Moore Institute Visiting Research Fellowship (NUIG)
International Society Eighteenth-Century Studies, International Seminar
Huntington Library Fellowship [respectfully declined]
Royal Irish Academy Charlemont Travel Award
Irish Research Council Postdoctoral Fellowship
PRTLI Government of Ireland Doctoral Scholarship
Irish Embassy to Britain Bursary for travel to Warwick University
Department for Employment and Learning Studentship (respectfully declined)
French Government Medal and NUI prize for proficiency in French
University Scholar (NUIG)
Dr H. H. Stewart Literary Prize for French
NUI Entrance Scholarship
Memberships
Committee member of Eighteenth-Century Ireland Society
Member of IASIL (International Association for the Study of Irish Literature)