The Diary of Mary Travers

Eibhear Walsh

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.