Life
1825-1879 [Anna Maria]; b. Bilton Rectory, nr. Wetherby, Yorkshire, or
poss. Bath; dg. of William Keary, former soldier and Anglican rector from
Co. Galway; ed. at home; wrote successful children’s stories incl.
Mia and Charles (1856) and Sidney Grey (1856), a school
story; cared for children of her widowed br., and suffered nervous breakdown
when he remarried; experienced religious enthusiasms; collaborated with
a sister on Heroes of Asgard (1857); passed travelled to Egypt
and experienced religious crisis, 1858; Janet’s Home (1863),
on religious theme; lived as semi-invalid on the French Riviera; Oldbury
(1869) portrays the small town where she was raised; novels include
Castle Daly: The Story of an Irish Home Thirty Years Ago (1875
& 12 edns.), set in days of Famine and the Young Irelanders’
Rising, and first pub. in Macmillan’s Magazine; sympathetic
to Home Rule, showing strengths and weakness of Saxon and Irish temperaments;
A Doubting Heart (1879), finished by Mrs. MacQuoid; purportedly
had no personal affection for Ireland. CAB DNB JMC IF NCBE SUTH
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Works
Castle Daly: The Story of an Irish Home Thirty Years Ago (London:
Macmillan 1875) [infra], and Do. [rep. edn.], Virginia
Crossman, intro., Castle Daly [Vol. 5 of Irish Women’s Writing,
1839-1888] (London: Routledge/Thoemmes Press ?1998), Memoir of Annie
Keary, by her Sister (London: Macmillan & Co 1883), 252pp. [British
Library lists 15 titles].
Reprint.
Castle Daly/The Story of an Irish House Thirty Years Ago, by Annie Keary, author of "Oldbury", Etc.//"Whereas to the composition of novels nothing is necessary but paper, pens, and ink, with the manual capacity of using them." - Fielding///London: Macmillan and Co. and New York /1889/The right of Translation and Reproduction is Reserved. [titlepage facing:] 1st edn., 3 vols., June 1875; 2nd edn., 2 vols. Aug. 1875; 3rd edn., 1 vol. 1876; rep. 1879, 1882, 1884, 1886; new edn. 1889. C
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Criticism
Margaret Kelleher, The Feminisation of the Famine, Expression of the
Inexpressible?: Representations of Women in Famine Narratives (Cork
UP 1997), contains remarks on Castle Daly as dealing with the need
for Famine relief.
Margaret Kelleher, ‘Irish Famine in Literature’, in Cáthal
Portéir, ed., The Great Irish Famine [Thomas Davis Lectures
Series], RTÉ/Mercier, 1995).
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Notes
Dictionary of National Biography holds that ‘she had
very little personal knowledge of Ireland, and her success can only be
attributed to her inheritance of Irish blood’.
Stephen Brown, Ireland in Fiction (Dublin: Maunsel 1919); f. was a Galway man, and rector at Bilton [Yorkshire]; novels, and works including Early Egyptian History; The Nations Around; Heroes of Asgard, &c. [deriv. DNB]. Castle Daly: The Story of an Irish House [sic err.] Thirty Years Ago [1875], 4th edn. (London: Macmillan; Philadelphia: Porter 1889); set in Famine and 1867, concerning the rising of William Smith Smith O’Brien; Irish and English characters compared to advantage of latter, young Ireland Movement viewed form both sides, and some sympathy with Home Rule, to which a character is converted. IF2 adds Father Phim (London: Warne n.d.) [opens in England, and moves to Ireland, where agrarian troubles are examined; the title is the family name of the heroine, for a supposed resemblance to the priest in Castle Connell, who is engagingly portrayed].
Justin McCarthy, ed., Irish Literature (Washington: University of America 1904) gives a famine scene from Castle Daly.
De Burca (Cat. 44; 1997) lists Castle Daly: The Story of an Irish Home Thirty Years Ago. London, Macmillan, 1879. New edition. Pages, iv, 576, 39 (list). New endpapers. Fine. [£50].
Fr. James Daly, the Prefect of Studies figured by James Joyce as
Fr. Dolan in A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man (1916) was
a scion of the Daly family of Castle Daly and a progressive educationalist
at Jesuit establishments of Tullybeg and Clongowes. (Se Peter Costello,
The Years of Growth, 1992, pp.76-77.)
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Princess Grace Irish Library (Monaco)