Life
1824-1877; b. East Main St. [now Cathedral St.], Thurles, Co. Tipperary,
dg. Peter Morgan Kavanagh and his wife Bridget (née Fitzpatrick,
b. Mountrath, d. 20 Dec. 1888; dg. of William Fitzpatrick & Catherine
Haggerty); bapt. a Catholic at Big Chapel, Thurles, 9 Jan. 1824; travelled
with parents to London and Paris; started writing in London in 1844; travelled
with her mother in France, Switzerland and Italy in 1854; issued some
twenty novels including Madelein[e] (1848), based on the
life of a peasant girl of Auvergne; Natalie (1853); and Daisy
Burns (1853), a domestic novel; also travel, A Summer and Winter
in the Two Sicilies (n.d.); biog. sketches of English and French Women
of Letters (1862-63); Julia Kavanagh wrote to Gavan Duffy, offering
to contribute to The Nation for no other reward than the interests
of her country (‘I am Irish by origin, birth and feeling, though
not by education, but if I have lived far from Ireland she has still been
as the faith and religion of my youth’); supported her mother after
separation from Peter Morgan Kavanagh, removing from London and settling
in Paris; contrib. to Irish Monthly Magazine (VI, 96); moved to
Rouen on outbreak of Franco-Prussian War, 1870; settled afterwards in
Nice, residing finally at 24 rue Gioffredo, Nice; d. 28 Oct., after falling
out of bed; bur. Cimetière du Chateau, Nice; a portrait by Henri
Chanet was presented by her mother to the National Gallery of Ireland
by her mother, who was interrred with her after her death at Nice on 20
Dec. 1888. CAB DNB DIW OCEL SUTH OCIL
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Works
Fiction [among 20 novels], The Three Paths, A Tale for
Children (1847); Madeleine (1848); Woman in France during
the 18th Century (1850); Nathalie, a Tale (1850); Daisy
Burns (1853), and Do., trans. into French as Tuteur et Pupille
(Paris 1860); Grace Lee (1855); Rachel Gray (1856); Adele
(1858); Beatrice (1862); Queen Mab (1863); Dora (1868);
John Dorrien (1875), et al. Miscellaneous, Women of Christianity
Exemplary for Acts of Piety and Charity (1852); French Women of
Letters (1862); English Women of Letters (1862).
French Women of Letters, 2 vols. (London: Hurst & Blackett; succ. to H. Colburn 1862), 319pp; 326pp. Contains ‘biographical sketches’ incl. Madamoiselle de Gournay; Madamoiselle de Scudery; Madame de Tencin; Madame Riccoboni [vol. I]; Madame de Genlis; Madame de Charriere; Madame de Krüdener; Madame Cottin, and Madame de Stael (to whom 3 chaps. are devoted).
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Criticism
C. J. [prob. Catherine Hamilton], ‘Julia Kavanagh, Biographer,
Writer, and Novelist, in Waterford Arch. Soc. Journ., (1907), p. 158.
Eileen Fauset, ‘The Politics of Writing: Julia Kavanagh (1824-1877)’, in Irish Journal of Feminist Studies, 1, 2 (Winter 1996), pp.58-68.
James Cahalan The Irish Novel (London: Macmillan 1988).
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Notes
Notices on Kavanagh appear in W. D. Adams, Dictionary of English
Literature [rev. edn.] (London 1879-80), A. Bone, A Critical Dictionary
of English Literature, 3 vols. (1859-71), F. Boase, Modern English
Biography, 6 vols. (1892-1921), Cassell’s Biographical Dictionary
(London 1867-1869), Dictionary of Contempoary Biography (London
1861), S. J. B. Halle, A Cyclopaedia of Female Biography (London
1861), and C. J. Hamilton, Notable Irish Women (1904); See also
Catholic Encyclopaedia on Internet at http://www.knight.org/advent/cathen/08613a.htm.
Charles Read, ed., A Cabinet of Irish Literature (3 vols., 1876-78), Vol. IV [ed. T. P. O’Connor], calls her dg. of Mr. Morgan Kavanagh ‘known as author of some curious works upon sources and science of languages’; long residence in France; returned London at twenty, and adopted literature; Three Paths, for children (1847); Madeleine (1848); A Summer in the Two Sicilies (London: Hurst & Blackett 1858); French Women of Letters (1862); English Women of Letters (1863). Novels incl. Grace Lee, Rachel Gray, Beatrice, Sibyl’s Second Love, Dora, Adele, and Queen Mab. Also Women of Christianity. Many republished in America. ‘true to life, delicate in expression, simple, and at the same time refined in style and thoroughly pure in tone. [ed.]’. An article by Charles Wood in Athenaeum is cited [n.d.], ‘high toned thought and morality ..’. Her last work was called Forget-Me-Not. The selection is from Nathalie, ‘ ... The sun had set, but a rosy flush still lingered in the west ...’. Rose passes away ‘noiselessly’ from TB, after some religious moralising with her more troubled sister, Nathalie.
Margaret Drabble, ed., The Oxford Companion to English Literature (OUP 1986), conveyed French life faithfully in her novels and tales, best-known of which were Madeleine (1848), Adele (1858). French Women of Letters (1862) and English Women of Letters (1863), highly praised. Forget-me-nots (1878), short stories.
Elaine Showalter, A Literature of their Own (1984), bio-note, only child of M. P. Kavanagh, writer and linguistic; remained single; travelled to Paris; first novel, Madeleine (1848). The chief fault of [her] Daisy Burns, according to the Westminster, was the fatiguing sustained high pitch of emotion it shared with other novels by women (ibid., p. 80).
John Sutherland, The Longman Companion to Victorian Fiction (Longmans 1988; rep. 1989), notes an extraordinary quarrel in which Julia was obliged to disown The Hobbies, which Morgan Peter Kavanagh. passed off as hers; the family returned to London from Paris and Normandy, evidently without the father, in 1844. Her earlier fiction, incl. Madeleine (1848), Nathalie (1850), Silvia (1870), Bessie (1872), have foreign heroines and settings; while Adele (1858) and Dora (1868) deal with resourceful, independent women. The Three Paths (1847) is the first of her children’s books; Forget-Me-Nots (1878), is a series of linked tales and her last work. Her last words, addressed to her mother were, ‘Oh Mama! How silly of me to have fallen.’ Collaborated on fairy story collection with her mother, Bridget, in 1876. BL 21.
Anne Brady, Women in Ireland ( 1988) lists C. J. [prob. Catherine Hamilton], ‘Julia Kavanagh, Biographer, Writer, and Novelist, in Waterford Arch. Soc. Journ., (1907), p. 158 [supra], and conjectures that ‘C.J.’ stands for James Coleman.
Nice Municipal Archives [France] give Julia Kavanagh’s name
as ‘Kavannagt’ and her birthplace as ‘Thorles (Angleterre)’.
See World Bibliographical Index, CD ROM; information supplied by
Madame Titsit of Bibliothèque Nationale de France.
The portrait in National Gallery of Ireland is by Henri Chanet, a French academician; it was probably painted in Paris where it was exhibited at the Paris Salon and then at the RA London, 1883 (Crookshank, Portraits).
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Princess Grace Irish Library (Monaco)