Life
1845-1913; [Hon. Emily; occas. pseud. “Edith Lytton”], b. Lyons House, Co. Kildare; dg. and 4th child
of Edward Lawless [3rd Baron Cloncurry; died by suicide at Lyons, 1896],
and former Miss Kirwan of Castle Hacket, Tuam, Co. Galway; g-dg. of Valentine
Brown Lawless, friend of Grattan and Lord Edward Fitzgerald; at first
interested in natural science, especially the botany of the Burren, but
defeated by rigours of Linnean taxonomy; issued A Millionaire’s
Cousin (1885), dealing with love of Adolphus Bell and the title-character
Hargrave for Hildegard Boson, a lovely girl entangled with a greedy mother
and sibling whom they meet in Tangiers; issued Ireland (1885),
a study; issued Hurrish (1886), a story of love and betrayal involving
the assassination of the landlord Capt. O’Brien ending in the murder
of the title-character by his opposite number Maurice, and featuring an
especially bloodsthirsty figure in Hurrish’s mother Bridget; set
in the land-war torn landscape of the Clare Burren; said by Gladstone
to have instructed him on the land question in Ireland; issued With
Essex in Ireland (1890), purporting to be an authentic memoir of Essex’s
secretary Harvey, and Maelcho (1894), dealing respectively with
the first and second Desmond Rebellions ending at Smerwick; issued Grania
(1892), set on Inishmaan and dealing with the story of a island girl
of great beauty and natural vitality (‘a very wild queer girl [...]
leaping and dancing over the rocks of the sea’) who is misused by
Murdough, the prime young male of the island, finally precipitating her
suicide; issued Plain Frances Mowbray and Other Tales (1889), the
title-story dealing with a clever woman who suffers misery when her brother,
Col. Mowbray, announces his intention of marrying after forty years together;
issued Traits and Confidences (1897), containing an Edgeworthian
story of Anglo-Irish decline centred on Lord Carrowmore, in ‘Mrs
O’Donnell’s Report’ and a tale of love between landed scion
and servant-girl in ‘Old Lord Kilconnell’; moves from Lyons
House, to to Surrey for reasons of health, but maintained ‘corner
of bog’ and Irish plants in her garden; grows increasingly depressive;
issues The Book of Gilly (1906), a children’s story
in which the son of Lord Magillicuddy is sent from India to visit Inishbeg;
her father and two of her sisters committed suicide, leaving her with
the care of her mother; remained unmarried, though thought to have had
romantic affairs with women; in later life a neighbour and friend of Shan
Bullock; received D.Litt. from TCD; exchanged letters with W. E. H. Lecky;
a collection of her papers were bequeathed by her br. Lord Cloncurry to
Marsh’s Library, where there is a sole record of her visiting on
Dec. 9 1889. NCBE IF DIB DIW DIL IBL OCEL DBIV IN JMC SUTH FDA ATT
OCIL
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Works
A Chelsea Householder, 3 vols. (London: Sampson & Low 1882); Ireland
(London: Fisher Unwin 1885; 5th ed. 1892), Do., rev. edn., with 2 add.
chaps. by Mrs A Bronson (1912); A Millionaire’s Cousin (Macmillan
1885); Hurrish: A Study, 2 vols. (Edinburgh: W. Blackwood &
Sons 1886; 4th edn. 1888; 6th ed. London: Methuen 1895; another edn.,
London: Nelson’s Library; rep. [with pref. by Robert Lee Wolff] Garland
1979); Do., ed. Val Mulkerns ([1886] rep. Belfast: Appletree 1993),
196pp.; Major Lawrence, FLS, 3 vols. (London: John Murray
1887), another edn. (1888); Plain Frances Mowbray and Other Tales
(London: John Murray 1889) [incls. ‘A Ligurian Episode’, &c.];
With Essex in Ireland (London: Smith, Elder & Co 1890; new
ed., London: Methuen 1902); Grania: The Story of an Island (London:
Smith, Elder & Co. 1892), and Do., intro. by Robert Lee Wolff
[facs. rep.] (MY: Garland Publ. 1979); Maelcho: A Sixteenth-Century
Narrative (Smith &c 1894); Traits and Confidences (London:
Methuen 1897) [incls. ‘An Entomological Adventure’, ‘Mrs
O’Donnell’s Report’, ‘Old Lord Kilconnell’, ‘Famine
Road and Memories’, ‘What the Bag Contained’, &c.];
A Garden Diary - Sept. 1899-Sept. 1900 (London: Methuen 1901);
With the Wild Geese, intro. Stopford A Brooke (London: Isbister
1902); Maria Edgeworth [English Men of Letters ser.] (London &
NY: Macmillan 1904); The Book of Gilly, Four Months out of a Life
(London: Smith Elder, 1906); The Race of Castlebar, being a narrative
addressed by Mr John Bunbury to his brother Mr Theodore Bunbury, acted
to His Britannic Majesty’s Embassy at Florence, Oct. 1798, and now
first given to the world (London: John Murray 1913), with Shan Bullock;
The Inalienable Heritage and Other Poems (London, priv. 1914);
also Ireland, A History, with additions by Mrs A. Bronson [Unwin
Story of the Nations Ser.] (London: T. Fisher Unwin 1889), Ill. Reprint,
With Essex in Ireland (NY: Garland Press 1979); Traits and Confidences
(NY: Garland Press 1979).
Grania: The Story of an Island, by the Hon. Emily Lawless (1892) [digital edition], at “Irish Resources”, ed. Michael Sundermeier, Creighton University [link].
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Criticism
[q.a.], The Nation, review of Hurrish
(20 Feb. 1886), [q.p.].
[Anon.], ‘A Great Irish Novelist’, review of Grania, in United Irishman (30 April 1892) [infra].
W. B. Yeats, [commentary on his list of 30 best books] Daily Express (27 Feb. 1895), [infra] rep. in Letters, ed., Wade (London: Hart-Davis 1954), pp.246-51.
W. B. Yeats, ‘Contemporary Irish Writers’, The Bookman (Aug 1895), [q.p.]; [q.a.], review of Hurrish in New York Times (21 March 1886), [infra].
Maurice Francis Egan, ‘On Irish Novels’, in Catholic University Bulletin, Vol. 10, No. 3 (1904), p.330; [infra].
‘Emily Lawless’, Times [obituary] (23 Oct 1913), [q.p.].
Edith Sichel, ‘Emily Lawless’, in The Nineteenth Century, LXXVI (July 1914), pp.80-100 [infra].
Stephen Gwynn, Irish Literature and Drama in the English Language: A Short History (London: T. Nelson 1936), p.115 [infra].
Seamus Fenton, The Honorable Emily Lawless, [lecture to Women’s Social and Progressive League, Dublin, Nov. 1944] (1944).
Padraic Fallon, ed. & intro., Poems of Emily Lawless (Dublin: Dolmen 1965), 52pp.
Robert Lee Wolff, ‘The Irish Fiction of the Honourable Emily Lawless’, pref. to Traits and Confidences (1897; rep. NY: Garland 1979).
Betty Webb Brewer, ‘She was Part of It’, in Eire-Ireland 18, 4 (1983), pp.119-31.
Elizabeth Grubgeld, ‘Emily Lawless’s Grania: The Story of an Island’ (1892), in Éire-Ireland, 22, 3 (1987) pp.115- 29.
James M. Cahalan, ‘Forging a Tradition: Emily Lawless and the Irish Literary Canon’, in Colby Quarterly, 27, 1 (1991); 27 39.
Bridget Matthews-Kane ‘Emily Lawless’s Grania: Making for the Open’, in Colby Quarterly, 33, 3 (1997), pp.223-35. Also ‘“With Essex in India?”: Emily Lawless’s Colonial Consciousness’, in European Journal of English Studies, Vol. 3, No. 3 (Swets & Zeitlinger, 1999) [q.q.].
James M. Cahalan, The Irish Novel (Dublin: Gill & Macmillan 1988), pp.80-84 [infra].
James H. Murphy, Catholic Fiction and Social Reality in Ireland, 1873-1922 (Conn: Greenwood Press 1997), Part I: ‘Upper Middle-Class Fiction 1873-1890’, pp.34; 43 [infra].
James M. Calahan, Double Visions: Women and Men in Modern and Contemporary Irish Fiction (Syracuse; Syracuse UP 1999), 234pp. See also Irish Book Lover, Vols. 5, 7, 32.
Liu Jin, ‘Emily Lawless: A Prose Writer’ (MA Diss., UU 2003) [infra] & Bibliography [infra].
Maurice Francis Egan, ‘On Irish Novels’, in Catholic University Bulletin, Vol. 10, No. 3 (1904), p.330.
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Notes
Justin McCarthy, ed., Irish Literature (Washington: University
of America 1904); gives extract from Grania, and ‘A Retort’
from With The Wild Geese.
Stephen Brown, Ireland in Fiction (Dublin: Maunsel 1919), lists Hurrish ([rep.] 1902); With Essex in Ireland; Grania; Maelcho; Traits and Confidences; The Book of Gilly (1906); with Shan Bullock, The Race of Castlebar (1914), about Humbert.
Arthur Quiller Couch, ed., Oxford Book of English Verse, 1250-1918 (new edn. 1929), 852; see also The Dublin Book of Verse, ed. John Cooke (1909).
John Sutherland, The Longman Companion to Victorian Fiction (Longmans 1988; rep. 1989), notes Swinburne’s encomium but lists Grania disparagingly, as ‘little more than a vehicle for [her] densely regional depiction of a distinctive local way of life in an unusual community that she knew at first hand ... map of the island appended to Smith, Elder’s first edn.’ In Who’s Who, she described her recreations as ‘dredging, mothing, gardening, geologising’; her novels updated versions of Banim brothers’ studies of Irish Peasantry and occasional historical romance; Hurrish ... was topical in the context of Home Rule agitation, though her loyalist views were controversial; Grania her most successful novel, read and enthused over by Gladstone [prob. error for Hurrish]; Race of Castlebar (1913) a light-hearted work about a threatened [sic] French invasion ... died leaving Bullock to write the last chapter by himself. Last years in Surrey in poor mental and physical health.
Seamus Deane, gen. ed., Field Day Anthology of Irish Writing (Derry: Field Day 1991), Vol. 2, dg. 3rd baron Cloncurry; grandfather, 2nd baron, involved with United Irishmen, emancipation and anti-tithe campaigns; corresponded with Gladstone following Hurrish; her father and two sisters committed suicide; retired disillusioned to Surrey. Gives extract from Hurrish p.1027ff. See also pp.990, 1021; 1217; 1216.
Elaine Showalter, A Literature of their Own (1984), Bio-note, b. Co. Kildare, daughter of a barn; ed. home, remained single; Some travel; first book, A Chelsea Householder (1882).
Katie Donovan, A. N. Jeffares & Brendan Kennelly, eds., Ireland’s Women (Dublin: Gill & Macmillan 1994), selects “After Aughrim” [infra].
Belfast Central Public Library holds The Book of Gilly (1906); Grania (1892); Hurrish (1888, 1902); In Alienable Heritage [sic] (1914); Ireland (1892, 1912); Maelcho (1905); Maria Edgeworth (1904); Plain Frances Mowbray (1889); The Race of Castlebar (1913); Traits and Confidences (1898); With Essex in Ireland (1890); With the Wild Geese (1902). BELF LIN holds Ireland (1887); With Essex in Ireland, extracts from the diary kept by H. Hervey, 1599 (1890); With the Wild Geese, verse (1902).
William Gladstone considered Hurrish an explanation of the ‘estrangement of the people of Ireland from the law’ [cited
in Brown, Ireland in Fiction (Dublin: Maunsel 1919)] and further
said that she had presented to her readers ‘not as an abstract proposition,
but as a living reality, the estrangement of the people of Ireland from
law and order’ (cited in Betty Webb Brewer, ‘“She Was Part
of It”, Emily Lawless’, in Eire-Ireland Vol. 18, 1983,
p.121.)
Aran Anthology?: In Grania Lawless wonders if Arran could support a literature.
Times obituary associated her with the ‘Young Celtic’ movement and remarked that ‘she was a lady of decided opinions and speech’.
W. B. Yeats borrowed his famous phrase, ‘the walk of a queen’ (in Cathleen ni Houlihan, 1902) from her Grania; and cf. Cathleen Ni Houlihan; cf. also A Vision, where Yeats writes of ‘beautiful women [who] walk like queens [and] ‘are gentle only to those who they love, [have] chosen or subdued.’ Note that the original occurrence of the phrase is in in Torcmharc Edain.
‘Mrs O’Donnell’s Report’, story, contains a character Maria, whom Lawless uses as a female version of Thady Quirk the Castle Rackrent (cited in William Galloway, UUC MA Dip., 1997.)
Maria Edgeworth: for Emily Lawless’s remarks on Maria Edgeworth’s Thady as a servant to the Anglo-Irish, see EIRData entry for Edgeworth.
Tim Cook at Kingston Univ., London, was working on Lawless in Summer 1994 [personal corr.].
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Princess Grace Irish Library (Monaco)