History Research Seminar - Dr Helen Williams

Women’s Work and the Book of Kells: The Illustrations of Margaret McNair Stokes and Helen Campbell d’Olier

The nineteenth and twentieth-century reception of the Book of Kells (800AD) was significantly shaped by the artistry of two women, Margaret McNair Stokes (1832–1900) and Helen Campbell d’Olier (1829–1887). Stokes was celebrated in her lifetime, being the first Irishwoman to be elected an honorary member of the Royal Irish Academy, though her work as an antiquarian has attracted more scholarly attention than the labour she shared with d’Olier, of bringing the illuminations of the Book of Kells to wider public audiences. 

Stokes and d’Olier reproduced illuminations from the highly prized volume whilst it was in situ in the library. Through lithography and magic lantern entertainments, their images circulated with public audiences. It was d’Olier’s images of the manuscript that adorned Edward Sullivan’s The Book of Kells (1914), a volume which became ‘a required possession in Irish Households’ and which sold well on both sides of the Atlantic (de Hamel, 2015). Her images drove the twentieth-century appreciation of the manuscript.

This paper reflects on the contributions of these women to a modern appreciation of the manuscript and the gendering of their labour in subsequent years. It reflects upon their modes of proffering to readers across the world the opportunity to appreciate one of the most remarkable medieval manuscripts of the Christian tradition. 

Chair: Katie East

Location: ARMB 1.05