Investigating Irish & Scottish Women Writers of Children's Literature

About the event

Join us for a day symposium on Irish and Scottish women writers of children's literature, c. 1750-1940.

The period in question witnessed major cultural and political shifts within Ireland and Scotland, yet regional and national identities have not fully been explored in children's literature of this era in question. Colonial expansion, Irish Home Rule, the birth of the Scottish National Party, and global suffrage were all major influences on literary culture during this period. This is combined with cultural developments in women's access to professional authorship, and the rapid diversification of print culture. And, most significantly for this symposium, the period witnessed the rapid commercialisation of children's literature, and its first Golden Age.

Although significantly overlooked, Irish and Scottish women wrote children's literature across various genres and forms: they played a major role in writing and illustrating fairy tales and folklore, they wrote New Girl novels of the fin de siècle, they wrote periodical stories and non-fiction for girls' and boys' magazines, and edited these same magazines, too (L. T. Meade and her editing of Atalanta). Many were trailblazers: the Scottish writer Dorita Fairlie Bruce was a pioneer of the school story genre; Annie S. Swan published more than 200 works in her career, while also co-founding the Scottish National Party and campaigning for suffrage.

The speakers at this event will be:

• Lois Burke & Sarah Dunnigan (event organisers)
• Pam Perkins & Beth Rodgers (keynote speakers)
• Ingibjörg Ágústsdóttir, Gillian Beattie-Smith, Gem Kirwan, Fran Henderson, Amy Wells, Jane E Sandell (panel speakers)

About the organisers

Lois Burke

Dr Lois Burke completed her PhD in 2019 at Edinburgh Napier University, where she was the recipient of a 50th Anniversary Scholarship. She then took up a Residential Research Library Fellowship at her alma mater, Durham University, before joining the Reference Services department at the National Library of Scotland.

Her work focuses on nineteenth-century archives and collections, particularly those that represent the writings of women and children. Since 2016 she has worked closely with the Museum of Childhood in Edinburgh and has co-curated 3 exhibitions there: ‘Bedtime Stories’, ‘Growing up with Books’, and ‘Changing Childhood.’ She is a member of the editorial board for the bilingual journal Jeunesse: Young People, Texts, Cultures.

Her work has featured in venues including Victorian Periodicals Review, The Conversation, and Durham University’s The Impossible Podcast. She is currently preparing a monograph, Victorian Girls Writings: Girlhood Cultures of Authorship in the Nineteenth Century, for publication.

Sarah Dunnigan

After graduating in English and Scottish Literature from the University of Glasgow, Sarah completed a PhD at the University of Edinburgh where she went on to hold a British Academy Postdoctoral Fellowship for three years. She was appointed to a lectureship at Edinburgh in 2002.

Her main teaching and research interests lie in medieval and Renaissance literature, especially Scottish; in fairy tales and traditional literature; children's literature; neomedievalism in c18th and c19th Scotland; and the history of Scottish women's writing. Sarah has written about various aspects of medieval and Renaissance Scottish literature, with a particular focus on poetry and women's writing; and on aspects of literary fairy tale collection and creation in Scotland from the late medieval period to the nineteenth century, including the relationship between the Grimms and Scotland.

She co-edited, with Suzanne Gilbert of Stirling University, The Edinburgh Companion to Scottish Traditional Literatures, and has published an edition of Violet Jacob’s 1904 collection of fairy tales for children, The Golden Heart and other stories. She has also published work on traditional Scottish ballads; mermaids in nineteenth-century Scottish literature and folklore; Scottish Gothic; Robert Burns and J.M. Barrie; and on a range of Scottish women writers from the c16th to the contemporary period, including Catherine Carswell, Nancy Brysson Morrison, A.L. Kennedy, and Alice Thompson.

How to attend

This event is free to attend, and open to all. You can book your free ticket on Eventbrite.

Are you interested in English Literature at Edinburgh?

We offer a wide range of undergraduate programmes, taught masters, and research degrees, including a Masters by Research and a PhD. As an undergraduate, you will read works of literature written in English from around the world, and encounter a range of ideas about the nature and purpose of literary study. Our courses explore the relationship between literary texts and the construction of national, international and imperial cultures. Working with colleagues in LLC and across the wider University, we are able to support postgraduate research which crosses boundaries between languages and disciplines.