Rosa Mulholland was born at some point in 1841, an exact date is not known, in Belfast, Ireland. At first her chosen career was to be a painter but by the age of 15 she had turned to a literary life and attempted to publish her first book.
She did submit several comical illustrations to Punch, but they were declined. However, Charles Dickens did review her work and encouraged her to continue writing.
Having spent some years in the rugged west of Ireland, Rosa used the landscape and characters to help fuel her writing talents.
Her twenty-two stanza poem 'Irene' (1862) was published by The Cornhill Magazine under her pseudonym 'Ruth Murray' with illustrations by the Pre-Raphaelite painter John Everett Millais.
Her first novel published was 'Dunmara' (1864), was also written as by 'Ruth Murray'. This story of an Irish girl raised in Spain who makes her way in London as an artist, somewhat reflecting her own aspirations. Despite the rise of Female activism Mulholland supported but did not offer overt support in her writing, tending to present her heroines as 'good wives.' She noticed how women struggled for happiness in a world where erotic love and marriage were tied to issues of material security.
Charles Dickens had published her in 'All the Year Round'. He even went as so far to suggest that her two novels, 'Hester's History' (1869) and 'The Wicked Woods of Tobereevil' (1872) be written for his periodical, then edited by himself. Dickens also republished two short stories 'The Late Miss Hollingford' (1886) and 'Eldergowan' (1874).
Rosa's poetry was almost always well received by both critics and the public ever since 'Irene' had been published. The poems were released collectively as the 'Vagrant Verses', in 1886.
Her novel of 1886, 'Marcella Gray', was first serialized in The Irish Monthly, and offered the example of a beneficent Catholic landowner as a solution to the Irish Question.
On 29th May 1891 Rosa, by now also a devout Catholic, married John Thomas Gilbert, a renowned Dublin historian at St. Mary's Pro Cathedral in Dublin. Gilbert's history books were very valued and he was knighted in 1897, Rosa then assumed the title of Lady Gilbert.
In her later years, she wrote fiction with strong-minded, independent women as heroines, and were directed mainly at young readers. These included 'Banshee Castle' (1895), 'The Walking Trees & Other Tales (1897), 'Spirit and Dust' (1908) and 'Dreams and Realities' (1916), Rosa also wrote a biography of her husband in 1905, who had died abruptly in 1898. She recounted that after a pleasant morning spent by the couple in their villa, Sir Gilbert had left alone to attend a meeting of the Council of the Royal Irish Academy, and died of sudden heart failure en-route.
Rosa Mulholland, Lady Gilbert, died in Dublin, Ireland in on 21st April 1921 and is buried in Glasnevin Cemetery.