Ethnicity Irish Occupation Writer | Name Emily Lawless Role Novelist | |
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Born 17 June 1845 Lyons Demesne Died October 19, 1913, Gomshall, United Kingdom Books Grania, Hurrish, The Story of Ireland, A Garden Diary, Traits and Confidences | ||
The Hon. Emily Lawless (17 June 1845 – 19 October 1913) was an Irish novelist and poet from County Kildare. According to Betty Webb Brewer, writing in 1983 for the journal of the Irish American Cultural Institute, Éire/Ireland: "An unflagging unionist, she recognised the rich literary potential in the native tradition and wrote novels with peasant heroes and heroines, Lawless depicted with equal sympathy the Anglo-Irish landholders."
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Biography
She was born at Lyons House below Lyons Hill, Ardclough, County Kildare. Her grandfather was Valentine Lawless, a member of the United Irishmen and son of a convert from Catholicism to the Church of Ireland. Her father was Edward Lawless, 3rd Baron Cloncurry (d. 1896), thus giving her the title of "The Honourable". In contrast her brother Edward Lawless 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 Land League and "uphold the rights of property against organised combination to defraud". The prominent Anglo-Irish unionist and later nationalist, Home Rule politician Horace Plunkett was a cousin. Lord Castletown, Bernard FitzPatrick, 2nd Baron Castletown was also a cousin. It is widely believed that she was a lesbian and that Lady Sarah Spencer, dedicatee of A Garden Diary (1901) was her lover.
She spent part of her childhood with the Kirwans of Castle Hackett, County Galway, her mother's family, and drew on West of Ireland themes for many of her works. She occasionally wrote under the pen name "Edith Lytton".
She died at Gomshall, Surrey.
Writings
Lawless wrote nineteen works of fiction, biography, history, nature studies and poetry, many of which were widely read at the time. She is most famous nowadays for her Wild Geese poems (1902). Her books were:
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 William Butler Yeats who accused her in a critique of having "an imperfect sympathy with the Celtic nature" and for adopting "theory invented by political journalists and forensic historians." Despite this, Yeats included With Essex in Ireland and Maelcho in his list of the best Irish novels.
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 misogynism 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 ownTwo of the poems including "Clare Coast" (source of the above lines) and "After Aughrim" were included in The Oxford Book of Irish Verse (1958).
Legacy
Her papers are in Marsh's Library in Dublin.