Life
1859-1945 [née Mary Chavelita Dunne; later Mrs. Golding Bright]; b. 14 Dec., Melbourne,
Australia, eld. dg. of Irish army officer, Cpt. John J. Dunne, and his
wife Isabel George, a Welsh woman; raised in New Zealand where she witnessed
Maori war, and later in Chile, Wales, Ireland, and Germany; mother d.
1875; f. appointed governor of Nenagh and Castlebar prisons; educated in Ireland and Germany in Catholic schools, 1875-77; wished to be an artist but trained as nurse; briefly
employed in London hospital; worked in New York, 1884-86; returned to
Ireland and acted as travelling companion to Charlotte Whyte Melville
and her second husband, Henry Higginson (d.1889), eloped to
Norway with Higginson, 1887; settled in England; influenced by Ibsen;
left Higginson and moved to London, 1888; published in The Yellow Book;.
m. Canadian novelist George Egerton Clairmonte (an ‘idle destitute
Canadian’), 1891; settled in Ireland with him at Millstreet Co. Cork;
issued influential New Woman stories as Keynotes (1893), with cover
by Aubrey Beardsley; incls. account of her relationship with Knut Hamsun,
to whom it is dedicated; affairs with John Lane and others; moved to London
as cause celèbre; trans. Hamsun’s Hunger (1894), had
child with Egerton but divorced, 1895; m. Reginald Golding-Bright, drama-critic
and literary agent, 1901 [var. 1907]; became drama agent to GB Shaw and
Somerset Maugham revisited Ireland, 1926; Discords (1894), incl.
‘A Psychological Moment: The Woman’; further collections, Symphonies
(1897) and Fantasies (1898); The Wheel of God (1898), autobiographical
account of life as young woman-journalist in New York; trans. Hamsun’s
Hunger (1899); Flies in Amber (1905) incl. ‘The Marriage
of Mary Ascension’, a tale of parental and clerical bullying in middle-class
Ireland; ‘Mammy’ and some other stories giving accounts of prostitution
in Dublin. DIW OCEL SUTH KUN OCIL
[ top ]
Works
Trans., Knut Hamsun, Hunger (London: Leonard Smithers & Co.
1899); Keynotes (London: Shand, Elkin Mathews & John Lane [Bodley
Head] 1893), with dust-jacket by Aubrey Beardsley; Do. [1st US
edn.] (Boston: Robert Bros. 1894), (viii), [9]-192pp.; Discords
(London: John Lane & Elkin Mathews 1894) [2nd edn.] (viii), 253pp.;
Symphonies (London: John Lane/Bodley Head 1897), stories; Fantasias
(London: John Lane/Bodley Head 1898); Rosa Amorosa: The Love Letters
of a Woman (London: Grant Richards 1901); Flies in Amber (London:
Grant Richards 1905); also Terence de Vere White, ed., A Leaf from
the Yellow Book, the Correspondence of George Egerton (London: Richards
Press 1958); also Keynotes and Discords (London: Virago
1995), 253pp.
Joan Smith, ed., Femmes de Siecles, stories from the 90s, women writing at the end of two centuries (London: Chatto & Windus 1992), incl. George Egerton “A Nocturne”.
A story, ‘Virgin Soil,’ is anthologised in Janet Madden-Simpson, Woman’s Part ...short fiction by and about Irish women 1890-1960 (Dublin 1984); it concerns a young woman destroyed by her ignorance of the physical side of marriage.
Terence de Vere White, ed., A Leaf from the Yellow Book, the Correspondence of George Egerton (Richards Press 1958), 184pp., Agnes Castle & Egerton, Marshfield the Observer and The Death Dance [stories, 1st ed.] (Macmillan 1900), 356pp., My Merry Rockhurst [1st ed.] (Smith Elder 1907), 311pp., hist. novel, The Lost Iphigena [society novel, 1st ed.] (Smith Elder 1911), 316pp., Love Gilds the Scene (Smith Elder 1912), 39pp.
[ top ]
Criticism
Studies,
Tina O’Toole, ‘George Egerton’s Transgressive Fictions’, in Anne Fogarty, ed., “Irish Women Novelists 1800-1940”, Colby Quarterly, 2 [Special Issue] (June 2000) pp.145-56.
Essay on Egerton by Scott McCracken, in Timothy R. Foley, Lionel Pilkington, Sean Ryder, and Elizabeth Tilley, Gender and Colonialism (Galway UP 1996);
Ernst Foerster, Die Frauenfrage in de Romanen englischer Schriftstellerinnen der Gegenwart [Egerton, Mona Caird and Sarah Grand] (Marburg 1907).
John Gawsworth, Ten Contemporaries: Notes toward their Definitive Bibliography (London: Earnest Benn 1932); Gail Cunningham, The New Woman and the Victorian Novel (1978).
Elaine Showalter, A Literature of their Own (1984).
Memoir of George Egerton in Austin Clarke, Penny from the Clouds (1968).
John Sutherland, Victorian Fiction, Longmans 1988).
[ top ]
Notes
Kith & kin: an obituary notice of her father, contributed by James Coleman to The Irish Book Lover, Vol. I, No. 9 (April, 1910), refers the ‘well-known author, artist, sportsman and soldier’ Further: b. Queen’s Co. 1837 ed. Clongowes and continent; entered army; served all over the world,; wounded in the Maori War; secretary to Isaac Butt; appt. Gov. of Castlebar Gaol; passed last years nr. London; ‘[a]n ardent Nationalist [...] nursed by O’Connell and [...] intimate with Parnell.’ Published How and Where to Fish in Ireland [1886 & 7 edns.] as “Hi Regan”; also Here and There Memories, by H.R.N. (1896), ded. to Butt. Cites George Egerton as eldest dg.; omits mention of his being cashiered.
Princess Grace Irish Library (Monaco)