Biography
I was born in County Mayo and educated in Trinity College, Dublin, and University College Dublin. I have taught at Trinity College Dublin since 2006.
My research focuses on the literature and culture of Victorian Britain and Ireland, though I also have a longstanding interest in eighteenth-century Ireland, especially the history and pre-history of Gothic literature on this island.
To date, I have written six monographs. Two have focused on Oscar Wilde: The Faiths of Oscar Wilde (Palgrave, 2005); The Fairy Tales of Oscar Wilde (Ashgate, 2007). Three examine different aspects of Gothic literature: Gothic Ireland (Four Courts Press, 2005); Gothic Literature, 1825-1914 (University of Wales Press, 2009); The Emergence of Irish Gothic Fiction (Edinburgh University Press, 2013).
I have also edited four collections of essays: Oscar Wilde (Irish Academic Press, 2010); Bram Stoker (Four Courts Press, 2013); Joseph Sheridan Le Fanu, with Valeria Cavalli (Peter Lang, 2016); Irish Gothic: An Edinburgh Companion, with Christina Morin (Edinburgh University Press, 2024). I also organized two major international symposia in Trinity College on Bram Stoker (2012) and Sheridan Le Fanu (2014).
Prior to my appointment to Trinity College, I was Lecturer in Victorian Literature in Keele University, Staffordshire (2004-05). I have also lectured in Irish Studies, in both Ireland (in University College Dublin) and Canada (at the University of Toronto),
I am convenor of the Senior Fresh module in Victorian Writing. Much of my teaching involves the study of popular literature, including Victorian Gothic and Victorian children's literature, and I am particularly interested in the intersection of religion and literature, the popular romance, the discourse of the child in literature and culture, and Gothic and horror in all their manifestations.
Publications and Further Research Outputs
Peer-Reviewed Publications
'Dealing with the Dead: Vampires, Corpses, and Serialisation' in, editor(s)Nick Groom and William Hughes , The Vampire: An Edinburgh Companion, Edinburgh, Edinburgh University Press, 2025, pp216 - 233, [Jarlath Killeen]
Jarlath Killeen, Review, Review of The Necromantics: Reanimation, the Historical Imagination, and Victorian British and Irish Literature, by René Fox , Nineteenth-Century Literature, 80, (1), 2025, p67-70
'Afterlives I: The Victorian Vicar' in, editor(s)Michael Griffin and David O'Shaughnessy , Oliver Goldsmith in Context, Cambridge, 2024, pp289 - 297, [Jarlath Killeen]
The Memoirs of Sherlock Holmes, Jarlath Killeen, (Oxford Sherlock Holmes), Oxford:, Oxford University Press, 2023, - 1-368
Bram Stoker, Dracula and the Irish Dimension in, editor(s)Jarlath Killeen and Christina Morin , Irish Gothic: An Edinburgh Companion, Edinburgh, Edinburgh, 2023, pp174 - 193, [Jarlath Killeen]
Introduction: Exorcising the Dead, Summoning the Living in, editor(s)Jarlath Killeen and Christina Morin , Irish Gothic: An Edinburgh Companion, Edinburgh, Edinburgh University Press, 2023, pp1 - 26, [Jarlath Killeen and Christina Morin]
Jarlath Killeen and Christina Morin, Irish Gothic: An Edinburgh Companion, Edinburgh, Edinburgh University Press, 2023, vii - 276pp
Jarlath Killeen, Imagining the Irish Child: Discourses of childhood in Irish Anglican writing of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, Manchester, Manchester University Press, 2023, 1-296pp
Jarlath Killeen, Review of Oscar Wilde and the Radical Politics of the Fin de Siècle, by Deaglán Ó Donghaile , Irish University Review, 52, (1), 2022, p156-162
'Stoker, Dracula, and the Critics' in, editor(s)David J. Skal and John Edgar Browning , Dracula, New York, Norton, 2022, pp455 - 469, [Jarlath Killeen]
Jarlath Killeen, Review of The Rogue Narrative and Irish Fiction, 1660-1790 , by Joe Lines , 18th Century Fiction, 34, (4), 2022, p499-501
'Joseph Sheridan Le Fanu and Ireland' in, editor(s)Clive Bloom , The Palgrave Handbook of Steam Age Gothic, London, Palgrave Macmillan, 2021, pp263 - 280, [Jarlath Killeen]
'Irish Gothic Fiction' in, editor(s)Liam Harte , The Oxford Handbook of Modern Irish Fiction, Oxford, Oxford University Press, 2020, pp50 - 66, [Jarlath Killeen]
Jarlath Killeen, Review of Oscar Wilde and the Simulacrum: The Truth of Masks, by Giles Whiteley , Comparative Critical Studies, 17, (1), 2020, p149-52
Jarlath Killeen, Review of Mad, Bad, Dangerous to Know: The Fathers of Wilde, Yeats and Joyce (Viking: London 2018), by Colm Tóibín , The Wildean, 56, 2020, p98-106
Jarlath Killeen, Review of Rough Beasts: The Monstrous in Irish Fiction, 1800-2000, by Jack Fennell , Books Ireland, 2020
Jarlath Killeen, 'Going Down the Drain: Sweeney Todd, Sewerage, and London Sanitation in the 1840s', Lublin Studies in Modern Languages and Literature, 43, (2), 2019, p3 - 18
'Meeting Little Red Riding Hood Again: Harry Clarke and Charles Perrault' in, editor(s)Angela Griffith, Marguerite Helmers and Róisín Kennedy , Harry Clarke and Artistic Visions of the New Irish State, Dublin, Irish Academic Press, 2018, pp225 - 246, [Jarlath Killeen]
Jarlath Killeen, Review: Philip E. Smith II (ed.), Oscar Wilde's Historical Criticism Notebook. Oxford and New York: Oxford University Press, 2016)., Notes & Queries, 65, (2), 2018, p279-80
Jarlath Killeen, ''Irish Gothic Tradition'', Oxford Bibliographies in British and Irish Literature, Oxford, Oxford Bibliographies, 2018, -
'Nora Roberts: the Power of Love' in, editor(s)Bernice M. Murphy and Stephen Matterson , Twenty-First Century Popular Fiction, Edinburgh, Edinburgh University Press, 2018, pp53-65 , [Jarlath Killeen]
"Picking Grandmamma's Pockets." in, editor(s)Keith O'Sullivan and Pádraic Whyte , Children's Literature Collections: Approaches to Research, London, Palgrave Macmillan, 2017, pp107 - 124, [Jarlath Killeen and Marion Durnin]
Jarlath Killeen, Review: Derek Gladwin, Contentious Terrains: Boglands, Ireland, Postcolonial Gothic (Cork: Cork University Press, 2016)., Irish Literary Supplement: A Review of Irish Books, 37, (1), 2017, p15
Jarlath Killeen, 'Review: David J. Skal, Something in the Blood: The Untold Story of Bram Stoker, the Man Who Wrote Dracula (New York and London: Liverright Publishing Corporation, 2016)., The Wildean, (51), 2017, p96 - 108
'Oscar Wilde in the Fourth Dimension: Ghosts, Geometry and the Victorian Crisis of Meaning' in, editor(s)Scott Brewster and Luke Thurston , The Routledge Handbook to the Ghost Story, London, Palgrave Macmillan, 2017, pp49 - 58, [Jarlath Killeen]
Jarlath Killeen, Review: Claud Di Vaio, Unburying the Past: The Hermeneutics of Truth in Joseph Le Fanu's Novels (The Gothic Press, 2015)., The Green Book , 8, 2016, p94-8
'Forgetting Le Fanu?' in, editor(s)Jarlath Killeen and Valeria Cavalli , "Inspiring a Mysterious Terror" 200 Years of Joseph Sheridan Le Fanu, Oxford, Peter Lang, 2016, pp1 - 28, [Jarlath Killeen]
'Tod Slaughter' in, editor(s)Elizabeth McCarthy and Bernice M. Murphy , Lost Souls of Horror and the Gothic: Fifty-Four Neglected Authors, Actors, Artists and Others, Jefferson, North Carolina, McFarland and Company, 2016, pp200 - 203, [Jarlath Killeen]
Jarlath Killeen, Review: Fionnuala Dillane, Before George Eliot: Marian Evans and the Periodical Press (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2013), Women's Writing, 23, (3), 2016, p414-17
Jarlath Killeen and Valeria Cavalli, "Inspiring a Mysterious Terror": 200 Years of Joseph Sheridan Le Fanu, Oxford, Peter Lang, 2016, 1-230pp
Jarlath Killeen, Review: John McCourt, Writing the Frontier: Anthony Trollope between Britain and Ireland (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2015)., Notes & Queries, 63, (2), 2016, p322-23
Jarlath Killeen, Review: Jen Cadwallader, Spirits and Spirituality in Victorian Fiction (London: Palgrave, 2016), The Irish Journal of Gothic and Horror Studies, 16, 2016
Jarlath Killeen, 'The Greening of Oscar Wilde: Situating Ireland in the Wilde Wars', Irish Studies Review, 23, (4), 2015, p424 - 50
Jarlath Killeen, Review: J. Robert Maguire, Ceremonies of Bravery: Oscar Wilde, Carlos Blacker, and the Dreyfus Affair (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2013), and Eibhear Walshe, Oscar's Shadow: Wilde, Homosexuality and Modern Ireland (Cork: Cork University Press, 2013), The Irish Review, 51, 2015, p113-16
"Dracula", , Andrew Hadfield, Oxford Bibliographies in British and Irish Literature, New York, Oxford University Press, 2015, [Jarlath Killeen]
Jarlath Killeen, Review: Charlotte Riddell, A Struggle for Fame (Dublin: Tramp Press, 2014), The Green Book, 5, 2015, p82-6
'Muscling Up: Bram Stoker and Irish Masculinity in The Snake's Pass' in, editor(s)Christina Morin and Niall Gillespie , Irish Gothics: Genres, Forms, Modes and Traditions, 1760-1890 , London, Palgrave, 2014, pp168 - 187, [Jarlath Killeen]
Jarlath Killeen and Christina Morin, 'The New Adventures of Miss Sophia Berkley: Revisiting Ireland's "First" Gothic Novel', Eighteenth-Century Ireland, (29), 2014, p159 - 163
'Introduction: Remembering Stoker' in, editor(s)Jarlath Killeen , Bram Stoker: Centenary Essays, Dublin, Four Courts Press, 2014, pp15 - 36, [Jarlath Killeen]
Jarlath Killeen, Bram Stoker: Centenary Essays, Dublin, Four Courts Press, 2014, 1-240pp
'Irish Gothic', William Hughes, David Punter, and Andrew Smith, Blackwell Encyclopaedia of Gothic, Oxford, Wiley Blackwell, 2013, pp356 - 360, [Jarlath Killeen]
'Emptying Time in Anthony Trollope's The Warden' in, editor(s)Trish Ferguson , Victorian Time: Technologies, Standardizations,Catastrophes, London, Palgrave Macmillan, 2013, pp38 - 56, [Jarlath Killeen]
Jarlath Killeen, The Emergence of Irish Gothic Fiction, Edinburgh, Edinburgh University Press, 2013, vi-239pp
'Wilde, the Fairy Tales, and the Oral Tradition' in, editor(s)Peter Raby and Kerry Powell , Oscar Wilde in Context, Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 2013, pp186 - 194, [Jarlath Killeen]
'An Irish Carmilla?' in, editor(s)Kathleen Costello-Sullivan , Carmilla: An Edition with Critical Essays, New York, University of Syracuse Press, 2013, pp99 - 109, [Jarlath Killeen]
Jarlath Killeen, Review: Christina Morin, Charles Robert Maturin and the Haunting of Irish Romantic Fiction (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2011), Irish Journal of Gothic and Horror Studies, 11, 2012
'Victorian Gothic Pulp Fiction' in, editor(s)Andrew Smith and William Hughes , The Victorian Gothic: An Edinburgh Companion, Edinburgh, Edinburgh University Press, 2012, pp43 - 56, [Jarlath Killeen]
'In the Name of the Mother: Perverse Maternity in "Carmilla"' in, editor(s)Gary William Crawford, Jim Rockhill and Brian Showers , Reflections in a Glass Darkly: Essays on J. Sheridan Le Fanu, New York, Hippocampus Press, 2011, pp351 - 372, [Jarlath Killeen]
Tim LaHaye, Left Behind and the Catholic Church in, editor(s)Crawford Gribben and Mark S. Sweetnam , Left Behind and the Evangelical Imagination, Sheffield, Sheffield Phoenix Press, 2011, pp69 - 83, [Jarlath Killeen]
'Evil Innocence: The Child and Adult in Fiction' in, editor(s)Valerie Coghlan and Keith O'Sullivan , Irish Children's Literature and Culture: New Perspectives on Contemporary Writing, New York and London, Routledge, 2011, pp115 - 129, [Jarlath Killeen]
Jarlath Killeen, Oscar Wilde: Irish Writers and Their Time, Dublin, Irish Academic Press, 2010, 1-210pp
Jarlath Killeen, Review: Maria Tatar, Enchanted Hunters: The Power of Stories in Childhood (London: Norton and Co., 2009), Inis: The Children's Book Magazine, 30, 2010
Introduction: Wilde's Aphoristic Imagination in, editor(s)Jarlath Killeen , Oscar Wilde: Irish Writers and Their Time, Dublin, Irish Academic Press, 2010, pp1 - 23, [Jarlath Killeen]
Jarlath Killeen, Review: Anglo-Irish Identities, 1571-1845, eds. David A. Valone and Jill Marie Bradbury (Lewisburg: Bucknell University Press, 2008), Eighteenth-Century Ireland, 25, 2010, p211-14
'Gendering the Ghost Story? Victorian Women and the Challenge of the Phantom' in, editor(s)Helen Conrad O'Briain and Julie Anne Stevens , The Ghost Story from the Middle Ages to the Twentieth Century, Dublin, Four Courts Press, 2010, pp81 - 96, [Jarlath Killeen]
Jarlath Killeen, Review: Margot Lanagan, Tender Morsels (London: David Pickering Books, 2009), by Margot Lanagan , Inis: The Children's Book Magazine, 31, 2010
Jarlath Killeen, Review: Bram Stoker, Lady Athlyne (Essex: Desert Island Books, 2007) and William Hughes, Dracula: A Reader's Guide to essential criticism (London: Palgrave, 2009), Irish University Review, 40, (1), 2010
Jarlath Killeen, Gothic Literature, 1825-1914, Cardiff, Wales University Press, 2009, 1-248pp
Jarlath Killeen, 'Irish Gothic Revisited', The Irish Journal of Gothic and Horror Studies , 4, 2008
'Teaching The Portrait of Mr. W. H.' in, editor(s)Philip E. Smith II , Approaches to Teaching Oscar Wilde, New York, Modern Language Association of America, 2008, pp196 - 203, [Jarlath Killeen]
'Irish Gothic', Ian Campbell Ross, Literary Encyclopedia, 2008, [Jarlath Killeen]
Jarlath Killeen, The Fairy Tales of Oscar Wilde, London, Ashgate, 2007, 1-187pp
Jarlath Killeen, Review: James Walton, Vision and Vacancy: The Fictions of J.S. Le Fanu (University College Dublin Press, 2007), Studies, 96, (234), 2007
Jarlath Killeen, Review: Catherine Maxwell, Swinburne (Tavistock: Northcote House Publishers, Ltd., 2006), The Oscholars, 3, 2006, pWeb Journal
Jarlath Killeen, 'Irish Gothic: A Theoretical Introduction', Irish Journal of Gothic and Horror Studies, 1, 2006
Jarlath Killeen, The Faiths of Oscar Wilde: Catholicism, Folklore and Ireland, London, Palgrave, 2005, 1-240pp
Jarlath Killeen, Gothic Ireland: Horror and the Irish Anglican Imagination in the Long Eighteenth Century, Dublin, Four Courts Press, 2005, 1-240pp
Jarlath Killeen, Review: Maria Edgeworth and Romance (Dublin: Four Courts Press, 2004), Irish University Review, 35, (2), 2005, p446-51
Jarlath Killeen, Review: Irish Catholicism since 1950: the Undoing of a Culture, (Dublin: Veritas, 2002), Irish University Review, 34, (1), 2004, p186-90
Jarlath Killeen, 'Oscar Wilde and Feminism: Prolegomena.' , The AnaAchronisT, 10, 2004, p46 - 60
Jarlath Killeen, 'Mother and Child: Realism, Maternity, and Catholicism in Kate Chopin's The Awakening.', Religion and the Arts , 7, (4), 2003, p413 - 438
'Woman and Nation Revisited: Oscar Wilde's "The Nightingale and the Rose." ' in, editor(s)Aaron Kelly and Alan Gillis , Critical Ireland: New Essays in Literature and Culture, Dublin, Four Courts Press, 2001, pp141 - 147, [Jarlath Killeen]
'Diaspora, Empire, and the Religious Geography of Victorian Social Relations in Wilde's Fairy Tales.' in, editor(s)P. J. Matthews , New Voices in Irish Criticism, Dublin, Four Courts Press, 2000, pp183 - 189, [Jarlath Killeen]
Non-Peer-Reviewed Publications
Jarlath Killeen, 'Foreword', Sheridan Le Fanu: Horror Stories, 2025, - 6-7
Jarlath Killeen, 'Nation of the Damned: Evil Irish Children in 1641', Gothic Presence., Sӧdertӧrn University, Stockholm, 17th May, 2023, Mattias Pirholt and Claudia Lindén,
Jarlath Killeen, Contemporary Irish Folk Gothic and the Search for Meaning, 16th International Gothic Association Conference, Trinity College Dublin, 29th July, 2022
Jarlath Killeen, Gothic Ireland Becomes Irish Gothic, Honest Ulsterman, (February), 2022
Jarlath Killeen, Irish Children's Literature: Oscar Wilde, The Irish Seminar, Dublin, 18th June, 2021, University of Notre-Dame
Jarlath Killeen, Oscar Wilde's Fairy Tales, Children's Literature Summer School, Trinity College Dublin, 23rd July, 2021, School of English, Trinity College Dublin
Jarlath Killeen, 'Gothic Literature and Its Cultural Impact'. Keynote Lecture. , Congreso Internacional Sobre Novela Gótica. , CEU, Universidad San Pablo, Madrid., 19 February, 2019., 2019
Jarlath Killeen, 'Le Fanu's Carmilla'. Plenary Lecture., Irish Gothic Symposium, School of Culture and Education, Södertörn University, Stockholm, Sweden, , 12 February,, 2019
Jarlath Killeen, 'Understanding Bram Stoker and the Perils of Biography'. Plenary Lecture., The Gothic, School of Culture and Education, Södertörn University, Stockholm, Sweden, 13 February, 2019
Jarlath Killeen, 'Torture Pornography and the Victorians' and 'The Corpse in Victorian Pulp Fiction'. Plenary Lectures. , Victorian Literature Symposium, Marii Curie-Sklodowska University, Lublin, Poland, 17th-18 April, 2018
Jarlath Killeen, 'Oscar Wilde's Revision of the Gospels', Plenary Lecture., The Bible and the Arts in the late 19th and early 20th Centuries: A Workshop., Trinity Centre for Biblical Studies, Loyola Institute, Trinity College Dublin, 17 February, 2017
Jarlath Killeen, 'Cleaning Up the Dead: Vampires, Sanitation, and Corpse Culture in Victorian England'. Keynote Lecture., From Queen Anne to Queen Victoria: Readings in 18th and 19th Century British Literature and Culture, University of Warsaw, 29th September, 2017
Jarlath Killeen, 'Oscar Wilde, Victorian Ghosts, and the Crisis of Faith'. Keynote Lecture., Irish Network for Gothic Studies. Inaugural Symposium. , Long Room Hub, Trinity College Dublin, 21 January , 2017
Jarlath Killeen, 'Bram Stoker, Dracula, and Irish Gothic Fiction', Ireland-Poland Culture Night, Embassy of Ireland in Poland, Pałac Pod Blachą, Warsaw,, 2 November , 2016
Jarlath Killeen, 'Changing Identities in The Importance of Being Earnest and Victorian Culture'. Keynote Lecture., The Importance of Being Earnest Conference, Université de Reims, Champagne-Ardenne. , 17th October, 2015
Jarlath Killeen, 'The Irish Protestant Gothic Tradition'. Keynote Lecture., The Church of Ireland Historical Society Conference, Christ Church, Dublin., 7 November, 2015
Jarlath Killeen, 'Unheard Voices in the Irish Literary Tradition: Stephen Cullen and the Discourses of the Eighteenth-Century Irish Child'. Keynote Lecture., SOFEIR International Conference, Paris, 20 March, 2015
Jarlath Killeen, 'Flannery O'Connor and the Southern Gothic: a View from Ireland'. Keynote Lecture., Flannery O'Connor and the Mystery of Place. International Conference on the 50th Anniversary of her death, All Hallows College, Dublin, 25 July, 2014
Jarlath Killeen, 'Bram Stoker's The Snake's Pass and the Irish Revival'. , Irish Literature Lecture Series., Department of English and Media Studies, Liverpool Hope University, 8 November, 2012
Jarlath Killeen, 'The Secret Garden: Centenary of a Classic', Inis: the Children's Books Magazine, 2011
Jarlath Killeen, 'Victorian Pulp Fiction', Keynote Lecture., IV Coloquio Internacional de Literatura Góthica: Lo góthico y su encuentro con la technologia', , IV Coloquio Internacional de Literatura Góthica: Lo góthico y Universídad Nacional Autonoma de Mexico, 6 April, 2011
Jarlath Killeen, 'Oscar Wilde, The Irish Land Struggle, and Fairy Tale Solutions', Keynote Lecture,, Urban and Rural Landscapes: Language, Literature and Culture in Modern Ireland, Högskolan Dalarna, Falun, 7 November, 2008
Jarlath Killeen, 'The Politics of Oscar Wilde', Keynote Lecture., Irish Studies Seminar, University of Toronto, 23 January, 2003