The Rosa Mulholland Book Club

While scrolling through TikTok a while ago (bad habit I know!) I came across a video entitled ‘The Great Forgetting’ and as I watched on the user 4TheLoveof Books described how hundreds of female writers were erased from literary history. She also recommended a book by Rebecca Romney entitled “Jane Austen’s Bookshelf” which outlines how Jane Austen ‘remembered the women who came before her and even lefty little nods to their work in her own writing.

If you’ve been on my ‘Dead Interesting Women’: Friars Bush Tour you’ll know I talk about the writer Rosa Mulholland, sometimes known as Lady Gilbert, some of whose family rest in Friars Bush. Rosa Mulholland was born in 1841 and died in 1921, and she published over forty novels during a fifty-year writing career. To put that into perspective Barbara Taylor Bradford also published forty novels during a forty-year writing career and everyone has heard of Barbara Taylor Bradford!

Whilst perhaps not all forty of Rosa’s novels were any good, I still think she deserves to be read in 2026. Writing was very often one of the limited career options for women in the 18^th and 19^th Century, and their own writing is one of the only ways we can have direct access to their own voices. I also discovered that many of the Gothic writers of the 19^th Century were Irish and female, and as I started to delve a little deeper I uncovered lots of writers from this part of the world who I’d never heard of - this was getting interesting.

So I had an idea for a book club! To bring some of these stories back to life and see what we can learn from some of their writing. It’ll be a place to chat about the women and their work, drink coffee and make friends – what’s not to like? I’m giving it the working title of ‘The Rosa Mulholland Book Club’ and if its something you’d like to be part of make sure you subscribe to the newsletter as I’ll be announcing the first book there in January with the first Book Club meeting potentially Sunday 1^st of Feb. As most of the books are out of print, but in the public domain, we’ll be able to read them for free too!

In the meantime, to wet your whistle, check out “Jane Austen’s Bookshelf” by Rebecca Romney and get reading.

Venue to be announced (although I do have a few places in mind) but if you own a coffee shop or venue space and you’re interested in hosting please

get in touch! weewalksbelfast@gmail.com