Dr. 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 - 114Journal Article, 2011, DOI
• Irish literary salons of the long eighteenth century, The Literary Encyclopedia, 2013, [Amy Prendergast ]Item in dictionary or encyclopaedia, etc, 2013
• Prendergast, Amy, Glossing the Diary: Women Writing for Posterity, the Case of Elizabeth Edgeworth (1781-1800), Life Writing, 19, (2), 2022, p277-294Journal Article, 2022, DOI
• Prendergast, Amy, A Winter in Bath, 1796-97: Life Writing and the Irish Adolescent Self, European Journal of Life Writing, 10, 2021, p18-40Journal Article, 2021, DOI , TARA - Full Text
• 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, p184-202Journal Article, 2020, DOI
• 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, p29-46Journal Article, 2016, DOI
• Transnational Influence and Exchange: The Intersections between Irish and French Sentimental Novels in, Cambridge University Press, 2020, pp189-206 , [Prendergast, Amy]Book Chapter, 2020, DOI
• The diary (1689-1719) and accounts (1704-1717) of Élie Bouhéreau, Marie Léoutre, Jane McKee, Jean-Paul Pittion & Amy Prendergast, Dublin:, IMC, 2019, -Critical Edition (Book), 2019, URL
• Amy Prendergast, Literary Salons Across Britain and Ireland in the Long Eighteenth Century, 2015Book, 2015, DOI
• Amy Prendergast, Mere Bagatelles: Women's Diaries from Ireland, 1760-1810, UK, Liverpool University Press, 2024, 1 - 256ppBook, 2024, DOI , URL
• 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]Book Chapter, 2025, URL
• France and French Writing in, editor(s)Michael Griffin and David O'Shaughnessy , Oliver Goldsmith in Context, 2024, [Amy Prendergast]Book Chapter, 2024
• Amy Prendergast, Review of Selena by Mary Tighe, A Scholarly Edition, by Harriet Kramer Linkin , Eighteenth-Century Ireland / Iris an dá chultúr, 28, 2013, p202-203Review, 2013
• 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, p136-138Review, 2017, URL

• Dr Brandon Yen and Amy Prendergast, 'Ireland and the English Lake Poets', 2019, -Exhibition, URL
• Amy Prendergast, Rational Creatures, Dublin Review of Books, 2024Review Article
• Amy Prendergast, Maria Edgeworth at 250, Books Ireland, (377), 2018, p23-Review Article
• Amy Prendergast, Review of Brown, Michael, The Irish Enlightenment., Review of The Irish Enlightenment, by Michael Brown , H-Albion, H-Net Reviews, 2016Review

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 (Liverpool University Press. 2024; fully open access) was awarded Honorable Mention for Robert Rhodes Prize for Books on Literature. It opens new avenues concerning authorship and female agency, transforming our understanding of women's contributions to literature and cultural movements. It has been described as `an excellent piece of scholarship, an absorbing read and a significant addition to early modern Irish women's studies' (WHAI), while Amy Culley, a leader in the field of life writing, described it as 'meticulously researched'. My first monograph, Literary Salons Across Britain and Ireland in the Long Eighteenth Century (Palgrave, 2015) offered the first detailed examination of the literary salon in Ireland, and has been positively reviewed across a range of international journals (see 4.3). I am co-editor of a special issue of the journal, Women's Writing. This will be the journal's first special issue dedicated to Irish writers. I have contributed to various edited collections, including from Palgrave and Four Courts Press, and several from Cambridge University Press. I have also published articles in various UK, Irish, and European journals. My current reseach project, MARGINS focuses on life writing by non-elite women in 18c Ireland. As part of this project, I was chosen for a TRDA PI award to hire a doctoral student. MARGINS contributes towards enhancing TCD's local and global social and sustainability ambitions through its key outputs, including an International conference on life writing by underrepresented individuals and communities, an edited collection on women's life writing from the margins, and workshops in collaboration with Marsh's Library. I plan to apply to Research Ireland's New Foundations scheme to help fund the conference.

• Title

  DIARIES: Textuality, Place, and the Self: Reimagining Life Writing through Women"s Diaries from Ireland, 1725-1810
  Summary
  Funding Agency

  European Commission H2020
• 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

Languages and literature, History, Heritage and Archaeology,

• Moore Institute Visiting Research Fellowship (NUIG) 2017
• NUI Entrance Scholarship 2003
• American Society Eighteenth-Century Studies, Elias Irish-American Fellowship 2017
• Department for Employment and Learning Studentship (respectfully declined) 2008
• French Government Medal and NUI prize for proficiency in French 2007
• International Society Eighteenth-Century Studies, International Seminar 2017
• PRTLI Government of Ireland Doctoral Scholarship 2008
• Marie Sklodowska Curie (MSCA) Individual Fellowship 2021
• Royal Irish Academy Charlemont Travel Award 2015
• Irish Embassy to Britain Bursary for travel to Warwick University 2012
• Irish Research Council Postdoctoral Fellowship 2013
• Huntington Library Fellowship [respectfully declined] 2017
• University Scholar (NUIG) 2005
• Dr H. H. Stewart Literary Prize for French 2004
• Honorable Mention for Robert Rhodes Prize for Books on Literature (ACIS) for Mere Bagatlles 2025

• Member of IASIL (International Association for the Study of Irish Literature) Present
• Committee member of Eighteenth-Century Ireland Society Present

• Secretary of Eighteenth-Century Ireland Society 2021
• Editorial board member for the Élie Bouhéreau Diary project, Marsh's Library, Dublin. 2015
• Expert reader for proposed titles for Oxford University Press and Boydell & Brewer. 2023
• Member of review committee for ECIS Postgraduate and Early Career Scholar Bursary
• Member of Prize Jury for ASECS Elias Irish-American Fellowship
• 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. 2012
• External Examiner for Doctoral thesis, University of Melbourne. March 2025