Sisters II lunchtime lecture - The seventeenth-century Boyle sisters and their letters

Sisters II, hosted by the Library, continues the celebration of sisterhood. The first talk of this second series will be delivered by Dr Ann-Maria Walsh, School of English, Drama & Film, UCD. She will explore the lives of the seventeenth-century Boyle sisters writing family and voicing the female through their letters.

Ann-Maria studied English at University College Dublin and was awarded her PhD in 2017; the thesis was titled, ‘Writing Women’s Lives: The Epistolary Cultures of the Daughters of the First Earl of Cork. She teaches in the School of English at UCD as well as working as a researcher in the University’s cultural heritage collections area.

Her monograph, The Daughters of the First Earl of Cork: Writing Family, Faith, Politics, and Place was published by Four Courts Press in early 2020. She has an essay on the Boyle women in Women’s Life Writing and Early Modern Ireland eds. Julie Eckerle and Naomi McAreavey (University of Nebraska Press, 2019). Ann-Maria is currently working on an edition of the Boyle women’s extant letters for the Irish Manuscripts Commission. Ann-Maria’s main research interests include seventeenth-century women’s letters, diaries, and other autobiographical writings, as well as early modern literature, material culture, and Irish and British history of that period.