A City of Words - Hidden Voices

Since the Dublin Writers Museum opened in 1991, scholars, readers, and publishers have rediscovered the voices of previously overlooked Irish women writers, like those mentioned in this section. Ideas of nationhood and identity are changeable, and our understanding of Irishness and Irish literature have broadened over time. Here at MoLI, we believe there are many different stories to tell about Irish writing. The museum has a collaborative, inclusive curatorial practice, and by supporting traditionally underrepresented writers, MoLI hopes to inspire the next chapter of Irish literary history. Perhaps you will help to write it?

Susan Mitchell (1866-1926), poet and essayist, was born in County Leitrim. Although, as a woman, she wasn’t allowed to enrol in classes, she passed Trinity College Dublin’s women’s examinations with honours. She became a friend of the Yeats family, and had her portrait painted by Jack B. Yeats. Mitchell was well known within Dublin literary circles and was acquainted with other writers mentioned in this exhibition, including WB Yeats, Lady Gregory, and Katharine Tynan. As a critic, Mitchell was both incisive and satirical, and not even her friends, like WB Yeats and George Russell (AE), were off limits in her scathing, humorous reviews. She died in 1926 and was buried in Mount Jerome cemetery. 

Elizabeth Bowen (1899-1973), novelist, short-story writer, and critic, was born at 15 Herbert Place, Dublin. Her childhood was spent between the city and Bowen’s Court, her family’s estate in Cork. Her dual Anglo-Irish allegiances became apparent when, during the Second World War, Bowen worked for the Ministry of Information in London, reporting on Irish opinions of neutrality. Her wartime espionage novel The Heat of the Day moves between London during the Blitz and a dilapidated Irish ‘big house’. Unable to manage the upkeep, she was forced to sell Bowen’s Court, and it was subsequently demolished. Bowen died in London in 1973 and was buried in St Colman's Churchyard, Farahy, County Cork, close to the site of Bowen’s Court.

Kate O’Brien (1897-1974), novelist, was born in Limerick City. She attended University College Dublin, taking classes in this very building, where she impressed her tutor Austin Clarke. O’Brien graduated with a second class BA in 1919, and left Ireland for London a year later. Two of her novels were banned by the Irish Free State Board of Censors: Mary Lavelle, for its frank depictions of women’s sexuality; and The Land of Spices, for a single line that was deemed ‘indecent’: ‘She saw Etienne and her father, in the embrace of love.’ O’Brien challenged the bans on her work, and won in 1946. She died in Kent, England on 13 August 1974.