EVENT: Happy Ever After Exhibition at MoLI

Launching Friday, 4 July 2025 | 6pm – 9pm

Museum of Literature Ireland
86 St Stephen’s Green
Dublin 2, D02XY43

This brand new exhibition at the Museum of Literature Ireland celebrates Irish romance fiction. Hear from curator Paige Reynolds and writer Emer McLysaght (Oh My God, What a Complete Aisling) at the free launch event!

Free tickets available here: https://moli.ie/events/first-fridays-july-2025

At the heart of romance fiction is a relationship and the promise of an emotionally satisfying resolution. In these books, loved by millions the world over, the conclusion is often an engagement or marriage. But romance can adapt or subvert reader expectations: it moves with the times.

For centuries, romance fiction by Irish writers from Lady Morgan to Marian Keyes has told the story of characters in love. Yet romance remains a target for public condemnation and critical contempt, in part because these popular novels have been written largely by and for women.

The exhibition explores the forgotten history of Irish romance fiction. Enough of the heartbreak: let’s examine the complexity and cultural significance of this misunderstood genre to give romance the respect it deserves. The exhibition runs until 9 November, 2025.

Curator Paige Reynolds is Professor of English at the College of the Holy Cross. She is author of Modernism in Irish Women’s Contemporary Writing: The Stubborn Mode (2023) and Modernism, Drama, and the Audience for Irish Spectacle (2007), and, and is the editor of Modernist Afterlives in Irish Literature and Culture, The New Irish Studies, and Irish Literature in Transition, Volume 6, 1980-2020 (with Eric Falci)