Sydney, Lady Morgan (née Owenson; ca. 1776 – 14 April 1859), was an Irish novelist.
Early life
She was born on a crossing between Great Britain and Ireland, the daughter of Robert Mac Owen (changed to Robert Owenson for professional purposes), an Irish actor.
Career
She was one of the most vivid and hotly discussed literary figures of her generation. She began her career with a precocious volume of poems. She collected Irish tunes, for which she composed the words, thus setting a fashion adopted with signal success by Thomas Moore. Her St. Clair (1804), a novel of ill-judged marriage, ill-starred love, and impassioned natureworship, in which the influence of Johann Wolfgang von Goethe and Jean-Jacques Rousseau was apparent, at once attracted attention.
Another novel, The Novice of St. Dominick (1806), was also praised for its qualities of imagination and description. But the book which made her reputation and brought her name into warm controversy was The Wild Irish Girl (1806), in which she appeared as the ardent champion of her native country, a politician rather than a novelist, extolling the beauty of Irish scenery, the richness of the natural wealth of Ireland, and the noble traditions of its early history.
She was known in Catholic and Liberal circles by the name of her heroine Glorvina. Patriotic Sketches and Metrical Fragments followed in 1807. She published The Missionary: An Indian Tale in 1811, revising it shortly before her death as Luxima, the Prophetess. Percy Bysshe Shelley admired The Missionary intensely and Owenson's heroine is said to have influenced some of his own orientalist productions. Miss Owenson entered the household of John Hamilton, 1st Marquess of Abercorn, and in 1812, persuaded by Anne Jane Gore, Lady Abercorn, she married the surgeon to the household, Thomas Charles Morgan, afterwards knighted; but books still continued to flow from her facile pen.
In 1814 she produced her best novel, O'Donnell. She was at her best in her descriptions of the poorer classes, of whom she had a thorough knowledge. Her elaborate study (1817) of France under the Bourbon restoration was attacked with outrageous fury in the Quarterly Review, the authoress being accused of Jacobinism, falsehood, licentiousness and impiety. She took her revenge indirectly in the novel of Florence Macarthy (1818), in which a Quarterly reviewer, Con Crawley, is insulted with supreme feminine ingenuity.
Italy, a companion work to her France, was published in 1821; Lord Byron bears testimony to the justness of its pictures of life. The results of Italian historical studies were given in her Life and Times of Salvator Rosa (1823). Then she turned again to Irish manners and politics with a matter-of-fact book on Absenteeism (1825), and a romantic novel, The O'Briens and the O'Flaherties (1827). From William Lamb, 2nd Viscount Melbourne Lady Morgan obtained a pension of £300. During the later years of her long life she published The Book of the Boudoir (1829), Dramatic Scenes from Real Life (1833), The Princess (1835), Woman and her Master (1840), The Book without a Name (1841), Passages from my Autobiography (1859).
Later life
She died 14 April, 1859 and is buried in Brompton Cemetery, London.
Legacy
Her autobiography and many interesting letters were edited with a memoir by W. Hepworth Dixon in 1862.
There is a bust of Lady Morgan in the Victoria and Albert Museum in London. The plaque, identifying the bust, mentions that Lady Morgan was "less than four feet tall."
This article incorporates public domain text from : Cousin, John William (1910). A Short Biographical Dictionary of English Literature. London, J. M. Dent & Sons; New York, E. P. Dutton.
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