[3] Having spent some years in a remote mountainous region in the west of Ireland, Mulholland seemingly became intrigued by the scenery and company, inspirations which greatly contributed towards the development of her literary longings and talents.

On 29 May 1891, Mulholland married John Thomas Gilbert at St. Mary's Pro Cathedral in Dublin, giving her residence in the parish registry as 48 Upper Gardner St.[6] In the biography she later wrote of him, she describes their marriage as having "brought joy to the crowning years of his unselfish and laborious life.

Besides occasionally serving as an editor of a volume of short stories, Mulholland produced a great number of novels[9] and wrote a biography of her husband in 1905, who had died abruptly in 1898.

[11] Though Mulholland wrote many novels that touch upon and investigate the general theme of females yearning to pursue artistic activities in a professional setting, her conclusions never defy accepted gender limits for women in the Victorian era.

[12] This story of an Irish girl raised in Spain who makes her way in London, England as an artist combined Mulholland's interest in female occupational pursuits with her love of art.

However, despite addressing fraught topics such as female autonomy and public careers, Mulholland was careful to backtrack towards the end of the novel, concluding by presenting 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.

In this novel a poor Catholic girl from Dublin who sympathizes with the Irish commoners inherits a west of Ireland estate and, advised by her priest Fr.

In her final years, she consistently wrote fiction with independent, strong-willed women as heroines, and her later work was mostly directed at young readers.

are available in digital form through the Nineteenth Century Collections Online database, as well as the serial of Dublin Castle published in the periodical Woman's World.