Emily Lawless
Emily Lawless | |
---|---|
Born | 17 June 1845 Lyons Demesne |
Died | 19 October 1913 Gomshall, Surrey |
Occupation | Writer |
Biography
She was born at
Emily had five brothers and three sisters. Her brother Edward Lawless, who inherited the family home, was a landowner with strong Unionist opinions, a policy of not employing Roman Catholics in any position in his household, and chairman of the Property Defence Association set up in 1880 to oppose the
According to Betty Webb Brewer, writing in 1983 for the journal of the
She occasionally wrote under the pen name "Edith Lytton".[5]
Some archival material pertaining to Emily Lawless is held in Marsh's Library, Dublin.
Writings
Lawless wrote nineteen works of fiction, biography, history, nature studies and poetry, many of which were widely read at the time. She is increasingly considered a major fiction writer of the late nineteenth century, and an early modernist innovator. She is often remembered for her Wild Geese poems (1902). Her books were:
- A Chelsea Householder (1882)
- A Millionaire's cousin (1885)
- Ireland (1885)
- Hurrish (1886)
- Major Lawrence FLS (1887)
- With Essex in Ireland (1890)
- Grania (1892)
- Maelcho (1894)
- Plain Frances Mowbray and Other Tales (1889)
- A Colonel of the Empire (1895)[6]
- Traits and Confidences (1898)
- Atlantic Rhymes & Rhythms (1898)
- A Garden Diary (1901)
- With The Wild Geese (1902)
- Maria Edgeworth (1904)[7][8]
- Book of Gilly (1906)
- The Point of View (1909)
- The Race of Castlebar (1914) - co-authored with Shan Bullock
- The Inalienable Heritage (1914)
Hurrish
Some critics identify a theme of noble landlord and noble peasant in her fourth book, Hurrish, a Land War story set in the Burren County Clare which was read by William Ewart Gladstone and said to have influenced his policy. It deals with the theme of Irish hostility to English law. In the course of the book a landlord is assassinated, and Hurrish's mother, Bridget, refuses to identify the murderer, a dull-witted brutal neighbour.
It described the Burren Hills as "skeletons—rain-worn, time-worn, wind-worn—starvation made visible, and embodied in a landscape." The book was criticised by Irish-Ireland journals for its 'grossly exaggerated violence', its embarrassing dialect, staid characters. According to The Nation "she looked down on peasantry from the pinnacle of her three generation nobility".
Her reputation was damaged by
Essex and Grania
Her historical novel With Essex in Ireland was better received and was ahead of its time in developing the unreliable narrator as a technique. Gladstone mistook it for an authentic Elizabethan document.
Her seventh book, Grania, about "a very queer girl leaping and dancing over the rocks of the sea" examined the misogyny of an Aran Island fishing society.
With the Wild Geese
Unusually for such a strong Unionist, her Wild Geese poems (1902) became very popular and were widely quoted in nationalist circles, especially the lines:
- War-battered dogs are we,
- Fighters in every clime;
- Fillers of trench and of grave,
- Mockers bemocked by time.
- War-dogs hungry and grey,
- Gnawing a naked bone,
- Fighters in every clime
- Every cause but our own
Two of the poems including "Clare Coast" (source of the above lines) and "After Aughrim" were included in The Oxford Book of Irish Verse (1958).[9]
Legacy
Her papers are in Marsh's Library in Dublin.
Emily Lawless Court in Bayside, Dublin bears her name.[10]
Further reading
- A book of criticism on Lawless—Emily Lawless (1845-1913): Writing the Interspace by Heidi Hansson—was published in 2007 by Cork University Press.[11]
- Emily Lawless, Grania: The Story of an Island, edited by Michael O'Flynn (Victorian Secrets, 2013)
References
- ^ a b Chisholm, Hugh, ed. (1922). Encyclopædia Britannica (12th ed.). London & New York: The Encyclopædia Britannica Company. .
- ^ "Emily Lawless". Princess Grace Irish Library. Retrieved 7 September 2010.
- ^ Emily Lawless, 'Traits and Confidences', London: Methuen, 1898, p. 37.
- ISBN 978-0-906500-48-4.
- ISBN 978-1-4466-9743-6.
- ^ Lawless, Emilia (6 July 1895). "A Colonel of The Empire". The Illustrated London News. 107: 9–12 – via Internet Archive.
- ^ Lawless, Emily (1904). Maria Edgeworth. Macmillan.
- ^ "Review of Maria Edgeworth by Emily Lawless". The Oxford Magazine. 23. The Proprietors: 400. 14 June 1905.
- ^ MacDonagh, Donagh & Robinson, Lennox, eds. (1958) The Oxford Book of Irish Verse. Oxford: Clarendon Press; pp. 100-05
- ^ Northgate documentsfingalcoco.ie Archived 8 September 2022 at the Wayback Machine
- ^ Cork University Press