Women’s Writing in the British Isles from the Beginnings to the Present
Sydney Owenson, Lady Morgan
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Standard Name: Morgan, Sydney Owenson,,, Lady
Birth Name: Sydney Owenson
Titled: Lady Sydney Owenson
Married Name: Lady Sydney Morgan
Pseudonym: S. O.
Nickname: Glorvina
Nickname: The Wild Irish Girl
In her capacities as poet, novelist, and travel writer with a sharp eye for culture and politics, SOLM
spoke for the early movement of Irish nationalism. She also wrote plays and verse. Her reputation, once dragged down by her politics, is now rising.
"Sydney Owenson, Lady Morgan, portrait" Retrieved from https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/e/ee/LadyMorgan.jpg.This work is licensed under the Creative Commons CC0 1.0 Universal (CC0 1.0) Public Domain Dedication license. This work is in the public domain.
She contacted several people (including the novelist Lady Dacre
and the Whig hostess and diarist Lady Holland
) for support in her application, which was fuelled by the examples of the pensions granted to Sydney Morgan
Reception
Jane Porter
The ODNB judged the London scenes (where the hero is living privately in London and trying to make a living out of selling his painting) the most convincing in the book.
Matthew, Henry Colin Gray, Brian Harrison, and Lawrence Goldman, editors. Oxford Dictionary of National Biography. http://www.oxforddnb.com/, http://www.oxforddnb.com/.
CG
, identified during her lifetime with satire on the upper classes, was depicted by P. G. Patmore
in Chatsworth; or, The Romance of a Week, 1844, Lady Bab Brilliant, who publicly lashed...
Reception
Maria Edgeworth
Scholarly and critical work on her ever since Marilyn Butler
's literary biography, 1972, has amassed a significant body of new understanding. In 2009 Susan Egenolf
discussed her work in political fiction along with some...
Residence
Catherine Gore
CG
and her family lived there for the next eight years.
Matthew, Henry Colin Gray, Brian Harrison, and Lawrence Goldman, editors. Oxford Dictionary of National Biography. http://www.oxforddnb.com/, http://www.oxforddnb.com/.
She later told Sydney Morgan
that Paris has been a land of Canaan to me, and the milk and honey will necessarily find their...
Residence
Lady Caroline Lamb
Lady Caroline had two homes, the Lamb estate of Brocket Hall (now a hotel and conference centre)
Douglass, Paul. Lady Caroline Lamb. Palgrave Macmillan, 2004.
292
and their town residence, Melbourne House in London. She spent much of her time at Brocket...
Textual Features
Georgiana Chatterton
GC
enters warmly into the sufferings, both physical and emotional, of the poverty-stricken, sometimes starving, Irish peasants. She insists that Irish people have good taste and intelligence, talent, imagination and wit, and feels that many...
Textual Features
Anna Maria Hall
AMH
also provides a satirical representation of Lady Morgan
in the form of Lady Babs Hesketh, whom Maureen Keene describes as a literary lioness who played the harp for an enraptured social gathering.
Keane, Maureen. Mrs. S.C. Hall: A Literary Biography. Colin Smythe, 1997.
110
Textual Features
Melesina Trench
About the first twenty pages are occupied by MT
's early reminiscences, probably written not long after her first husband's death: she frankly recorded her emotional disturbance over that event.
Trench, Melesina. The Remains of the Late Mrs. Richard Trench. Editor Trench, Richard Chenevix, Parker and Bourn, 1862.
18
Later pages mix letters...
Textual Features
Adelaide O'Keeffe
AOK
's unusual historical novel, which appeared several years before anything comparable by Sydney Morgan
, Christian Isobel Johnstone
, or Sir Walter Scott
, seems to carry within itself the seeds of the national...
Textual Features
Katharine Tynan
At the centre of this novel stands a young Irish girl brought up solely by her father, who is a Gaelic scholar. The action moves between Dublin and London. The plot involves a love...
Textual Features
Mary Martin
This novel follows in a tradition of presenting politically educative romance between Irish Catholic and English Protestant, which goes back to Sydney Owenson
'The Wild Irish Girl, 1806. Its interest lies in its...
Textual Features
Elizabeth Hervey
It is variously and descriptively set in Wales (where it opens near the mountains of Snowdon and Penmaenmawr), Ireland, and South Carolina, where Ned's adventures begin with landing at Charlestown (or Charleston)...
Textual Features
Catherine Gore
CG
told Sydney Morgan
that her publisher, Bentley
, had both thought of the subject and suggested the title. But with this self-exculpation she admitted that her protagonist was based on Mary, Countess of Cork and Orrery
Textual Features
Anne Plumptre
She aims, she says, at accuracy . . . impartiality . . . . fidelity,
Plumptre, Anne. Narrative of a Residence in Ireland. Henry Colburn, 1817.
v-vi
and hopes this book will arouse a deeper interest than that about France, since it concerns an object so...
