Siobhán Marie Kilfeather *89

Siobhan Kilfeather died April 7, 2007, of melanoma. She was 49.

Born in Belfast, Northern Ireland, she received a bachelor’s from Selwyn College, Cambridge, and spent several years involved in poetic and political circles in Belfast before coming to Princeton. After receiving a Ph.D. in English, she taught at Columbia University in New York and at Sussex University in England before returning to Belfast and Queen’s University in 2005.

According to Paul Muldoon, Howard G.B. Clark ’21 University Professor in the Humanities and director of the University Center for the Creative and Performing Arts, “Siobhan was a major figure in Irish studies, particularly in her repossession of previously little-known 18th-century writers whose work, like her own, is less showy than sustained, less pumped-up than persistent.”

Kilfeather edited works by Maria Edge-worth and Louisa May Alcott; published Dublin: A Cultural and Literary History (2005); and led the editorial team of the Field Day Anthology of Irish Writing, volumes 4 and 5 (2002), which focused on women writers.

She is survived by her husband, Peter Jameson, and their children, Constance and Oscar. The English Department at Princeton has started a fund in Kilfeather’s honor to support graduate student research.