Dora Sigerson

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Standard Name: Sigerson, Dora
Birth Name: Dora Mary Sigerson
Married Name: Dora Mary Shorter
Married Name: Dora Mary Sigerson Shorter
Irish nationalist and Celtic revivalist DS published twenty-two volumes of poetry (in which ballads predominate), as well as two collections of short stories, one of short sketches, a fairy tale, a nursery rhyme, and a novel. Some of her poetry volumes reprint writing from earlier books. Some of her writings mix prose and poetry, narrative and song: a form of lyricism reminiscent of traditional Irish story-telling. Much of her poetry laments the loss of Celtic culture, mythology, language, and literature, grief for the golden past of Kathleen Ni Houlihan (the glorified female embodiment of Ireland), and mourning for the deaths of Irish nationalists and for the devastation inflicted on Ireland's land and people by years of warfare.
Hanley, Evelyn A. “Dora Sigerson Shorter: Late Victorian Romantic”. Victorian Poetry, No. 1, pp. 223 - 34.
232
She also addresses gender and family issues, telling tales of women who sacrifice themselves for love or for lovers, while their men are generally unconstant if not actually false.
“Dictionary of Literary Biography online”. Gale Databases: Literature Resource Center-LRC.
240
Her prose sketches reflect her love of nature and animals.
Black and white, head-and-shoulders photograph of Dora Sigerson. She turns away from the camera, her face in profile. She is wearing a simple light dress and has short curly hair.
"Dora Sigerson" Retrieved from https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Dora_Sigerson_(The_Sad_Years).png. 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.

Connections

Connections Sort descending Author name Excerpt
Friends, Associates Maud Gonne
An important friend and mentor to her in her Irish opinions
Ellmann, Richard. Yeats: The Man and the Masks. Faber and Faber, 1961.
104
was John O'Leary , who also provided her introduction to Yeats. She was a friend, too, of his sister Ellen O'Leary , of...
Friends, Associates Evelyn Sharp
Others with whom she shared this or that memorable experience were the Meynells (Wilfrid , Alice , and Viola ), Clarence Rook and his wife, and Henry W. Nevinson , whom she eventually married...
Friends, Associates Katharine Tynan
Attending a Journalists' Congress, KT met the prominent English journalist and editor Clement Shorter (later the husband of her friend Dora Sigerson ).
Tynan, Katharine. The Middle Years. Constable, 1916.
105
Friends, Associates Katharine Tynan
Father Matthew Russell , founder and editor of the Irish Monthly, played a prominent role in KT 's development as a professional writer (as he did too with her contemporary Dora Sigerson ).
Tynan, Katharine. Twenty-Five Years: Reminiscences. Smith, Elder, 1913.
120-2
Friends, Associates Katharine Tynan
Among those who frequented KT 's salon were George Russell (Æ), Irish Nationalist and Fenian leader John O'Leary , Gaelic scholar and revivalist Douglas Hyde (founder of the Gaelic League , 1893), and George Sigerson
Literary responses Henrietta Euphemia Tindal
After languishing for more than a century, HET 's work has reappeared in the anthology of Victorian women poets edited by Angela Leighton and Margaret Reynolds .Leighton compares her unsentimenal poems on childbirth and motherhood...
Occupation Constance Smedley
Since the Langham Place Group had provided a social space for women in 1860, several organizations had already challenged the flourishing institution of men's clubs. The Lyceum Club came on the scene at a time...
politics Katharine Tynan
KT was a Parnellite: that is, she continued to support the Irish nationalist Charles Stewart Parnell even after he was found guilty of adultery in the O'Shea divorce case in November 1890. Parnell had led...
Textual Features Katharine Tynan
KT stays with Irish mythology in The Fairy Babe, about a mother whose baby has been replaced by fairies with a changeling child. She figures Ireland in the body of the generous Kathleen who...
Textual Features Katharine Tynan
She limited her selection to Irish lyrical poetry of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, excluding political poems and poems either derived from English or already well-known to English audiences. Her wide range of poets included...
Textual Production Katharine Tynan
In addition to this editorial work, KT also wrote introductions or forewords for a number of volumes, including Lionel Johnson 's Poems (1904), Edmund Leamy 's By the Barrow River and Other Stories (1907), The...
Theme or Topic Treated in Text John Oliver Hobbes
JOH sometimes discusses her own writing, career, and ambition: One's place in literature is a possession—never a concession. And one knows one's place. I don't wish to be judged—one way or the other—till I am...
Travel Katharine Tynan
Fellow Irish poets KT and Dora Sigerson travelled around County Donegal together.
Tynan, Katharine. The Middle Years. Constable, 1916.
78-9

Timeline

1890
The year following Irish nationalist Ellen O'Leary 's death from breast cancer on 15 October 1889, her Lays of Country, Home and Friends (many of them political) were collected and published.
3 August 1916
In the aftermath of the Easter Rising, Irish nationalist Roger Casement , formerly Sir Roger, was executed for treason at Pentonville Prison in London for attempting to smuggle a shipment of German arms to Ireland.