The Diary of Mary Travers
The backdrop to this engaging novel, written in diary form, is the 1895 Oscar Wilde trial at London’s Old Bailey. The trial, reported in a somewhat coy fashion in papers like the Cork Examiner, is of particular interest to Mary Travers, the narrator of Eibear Walshe’s novel.
As Walshe explains his book is a work of fiction based on the real trial involving Mary Travers and Jane Wilde, the mother of Oscar Wilde who was a famous nationalist poet known by the nom de plume, Speranza.
