Women's Collaborative Literary Processes and Networks: Mary and Matilda Banim's Ireland

Abstract

ABSTRACT This essay examines the literary and domestic networks of Mary (c 1847–1939) and Matilda (1842–1906) Banim, and the connections they forged on a personal level and in the wider world of publishing and philanthropy. Foregrounding earlier nineteenth-century female philanthropic networks and collaborations, such as those around the establishment of St Joseph's Infirmary for Sick Children (later Temple Street Children's Hospital, Dublin), I demonstrate first how Mary Banim inserted herself into the enabling spaces that these women created. Collaborating with her sister Matilda Banim, an illustrator, Mary Banim also published a series of travel articles which were reprinted in book form as Here and There Through Ireland, (1891, 1892). This work showcases Mary and Matilda Banim's representation of “the real Irish people,” their collaboration as writer and artist, and their unique and particular brand of social journalism which offers rare glimpses of nineteenth-century literary and social culture from a female perspective. In addition, by drawing attention to a significant but forgotten sibling partnership and exploring the public lives of two private sisters, this article contributes to a growing field of scholarship on familial collaborations.