Sydney, Lady Morgan  

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"Rosa drew his first inspirations from the magnificent scenery of Pausilippo and Vesuvius; Hogarth found his in a pot-house at Highgate, where a drunken quarrel and a broken nose first "woke the god within him." Both, however, reached the sublime in their respective vocations, -Hogarth in the grotesque, and Salvator in the majestic." --''Life and Times of Salvator Rosa (1823) by Sydney, Lady Morgan

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Sydney, Lady Morgan (née Owenson; 25 December 1781? – 14 April 1859), was an Irish novelist, known as the author of The Wild Irish Girl and of travel guides such as Italy.

Career

She was one of the most vivid and hotly discussed literary figures of her generation. She began her career with a precocious volume of poems. She collected Irish tunes, for which she composed the words, thus setting a fashion adopted with signal success by Thomas Moore. Her novel St. Clair (1804), about ill-judged marriage, ill-starred love and impassioned nature worship, in which the influence of Johann Wolfgang von Goethe (specifically his novel The Sorrows of Young Werther) and Jean-Jacques Rousseau was apparent, at once attracted attention. Another novel, The Novice of St. Dominick (1806), was also praised for its qualities of imagination and description.

But the book which made her reputation and brought her name into warm controversy was The Wild Irish Girl (1806), in which she appeared as the ardent champion of her native country, a politician rather than a novelist, extolling the beauty of Irish scenery, the richness of the natural wealth of Ireland, and the noble traditions of its early history. She was known in Catholic and Liberal circles by the name of her heroine Gloria.

Patriotic Sketches and Metrical Fragments followed in 1807. She published The Missionary: An Indian Tale in 1811, revising it shortly before her death as Luxima, the Prophetess. Percy Bysshe Shelley admired The Missionary intensely and Owenson's heroine is said to have influenced some of his own orientalist productions.

Miss Owenson entered the household of John Hamilton, 1st Marquess of Abercorn, and in 1812 — persuaded by Lady Abercorn, the former Lady Anne Jane Gore — she married the philosopher and surgeon to the household, Sir Thomas Charles Morgan, but books continued to flow from her facile pen.

In 1814 she produced her best novel, O'Donnell. She was at her best in her descriptions of the poorer classes, of whom she had a thorough knowledge. Her elaborate study (1817) of France under the Bourbon Restoration was attacked with outrageous fury by John Wilson Croker in the Quarterly Review, the author being accused of Jacobinism, falsehood, licentiousness, and impiety.

Italy, a companion work to her France, was published in 1821 with appendices by her husband; Lord Byron bears testimony to the justness of its pictures of life. The results of Italian historical studies were given in her Life and Times of Salvator Rosa (1823). Then she turned again to Irish manners and politics with a matter-of-fact book on Absenteeism (1825), and a romantic novel with political overtones, The O'Briens and the O'Flahertys (1827). From William Lamb, Viscount Melbourne, Lady Morgan obtained a pension of £300. During the later years of her long life she published The Book of the Boudoir (1829), Dramatic Scenes from Real Life (1833), The Princess (1835), Woman and her Master (1840), The Book without a Name (1841), and Passages from my Autobiography (1859).

Sir Thomas died in 1843, and Lady Morgan died on 14 April 1859 (aged about 82) and was buried in Brompton Cemetery, London.

Pages linking in as of 2022

Allegory of Fortune, Anne Burke (writer), Anne Fuller, Articles by John Neal, Bernard Mulrenin, Brompton Cemetery, Bureaucracy, Catherine Isabella Osborne, Chawton House, Dale Spender, December 25, Eighteenth-century Gothic novel, Ethna Byrne-Costigan, Geraldine Jewsbury, Gilbert du Motier, Marquis de Lafayette, Henry Colburn, Hercules Robert Pakenham, History of a Six Weeks' Tour, History of hurling, Inès Esménard, Irish prose fiction, Jacques-Théodore Parisot, John Abraham Fisher, John Wilson Croker, Katherine Thomson (English writer), Lady Caroline Lamb, Liber sine nomine, Lionel Stevenson, List of authors by name: M, List of biographical dictionaries of women writers in English, List of early-modern British women novelists, List of early-modern British women poets, List of foods named after people, List of Irish novelists, List of Irish women writers, List of Irish writers, List of years in literature, Literary feud, Lives of the Most Eminent Literary and Scientific Men, Martha Wilmot, Minstrel, Mona Wilson, Mothers of the Novel: 100 Good Women Writers Before Jane Austen, Mrs F. C. Patrick, Olivia Owenson, Lady Clarke, Oxford period poetry anthologies, Quarterly Review, Rambles in Germany and Italy, René Théodore Berthon, Rhoda Power, Richard Daly, Richard Kirwan, Robert Owenson, Salvator Rosa (opera), Salvator Rosa, Sarah Green (novelist), Self-immolation, Soup and bouilli, Sydney Morgan, The French Revolution: A History, The Missionary: An Indian Tale, The New Monthly Magazine, The Wild Irish Girl, Thomas Charles Morgan, Thomas Furlong (poet), Thomas Simpson Cooke, Tommaso Giordani, Turlough O'Carolan, William Hepworth Dixon, Women's writing (literary category)





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