Amy Prendergast, Mere Bagatelles: Women’s Diaries from Ireland, 1760-1810

Abstract

Amy Prendergast’s archival study of women’s diaries from eighteenth-century Ireland demonstrates that recovery work in women’s literature is far from complete. A significant contribution to diary studies, particularly in the context of Irish women’s literature and eighteenth-century studies, Mere Bagatelles: Women’s Diaries from Ireland, 1760-1810 showcases an impressive amount of archival discovery and manuscript engagement. The book’s opening list of eighteenth-century Irish diarists—more than forty in number—along with details of their diary manuscripts’ locations (some even missing or destroyed) speaks for itself. These are the kind of Irish texts that, up until now, have been very little (if at all) discussed in academic research. This book, however, is not simply a series of biographies or reading summaries. While offering her reader a distinct snapshot of each of the female diarists she discusses, capturing their writing styles and personal concerns, Prendergast also provides astute academic commentary about the nature of the diary form and Irish women’s writing more broadly. This book is primarily interested in form and feminism, but it does not shy away from Ireland’s colonial context either. In some of the most interesting parts of the book, Prendergast examines the privileged, Anglican diarists’ take on—or omission of—the Irish Catholic tenantry. Like the diaries it studies, Mere Bagatelles is multi-faceted, displaying a number of academic methodologies and a range of eighteenth-century concerns, from melancholia and grief to landscape and nationalism. Although niche in its subject matter and perhaps limited in its focus on a primarily Protestant female elite, Prendergast nevertheless expands and enlivens our picture of eighteenth-century Ireland by adding new colorful details to a familiar portrait of that century.