Lawless, Emily (1845–1913)

Irish novelist and poet. Name variations: Honorable Emily Lawless. Born on June 17, 1845, in County Kildare, Ireland; died on October 19, 1913, in Surrey, England; daughter of Lord Edward Lawless, third Baron Cloncurry, and Lady Elizabeth Kirwan; had early education at home; D.Litt., Trinity College, Dublin; never married; no children.

Selected writings:

Hurrish (1886); Major Lawrence FLS (1887); With Essex in Ireland (1890); Maelcho (1894); Grania (1892); (poems) With the Wild Geese (1892); (biography) The Life of Maria Edgeworth (1904); (poems and prose) The Point of View (1909); (co-written with Shan E. Bullock and completed after Lawless' death) The Race of Castlebar (1913); The Inalienable Heritage (poems, 1914); (edited by Padraic Fallon) Collected Poems (1965).

The oldest of eight children, Emily Lawless was born on June 17, 1845, on her father's estate in County Kildare, Ireland. The Lawless family was a part of the wealthy Anglo-Irish upper class; her father was Lord Edward Lawless, third Baron Cloncurry, who committed suicide when she was 14, and her mother, Lady Elizabeth Kirwan , was an acclaimed society beauty. Growing up into a fairly solitary woman with an affinity for the outdoors, Lawless lived most of her life at her father's estate and at her mother's, in County Galway, riding horses, gardening, swimming, and translating her observations of the natural world around her into the realistic settings of her novels and poetry.

Lawless' novels were serious efforts to address contemporary problems in Ireland, including peasant violence, and she was praised for her accurate depictions of Irish peasant life. Her writings, including Hurrish, which takes place in County Clare shortly before the start of the struggle for Irish Home Rule, reveal a strong nationalist vision of Ireland. The English politician W.E. Gladstone, who as prime minister in 1886 introduced the first bill for Home Rule, praised Hurrish, which was published that year, for showing "a living reality, the estrangement of the people of Ireland from the law." She also wrote a history of Ireland (1887) and a biography of the Irish novelist Maria Edgeworth (1904), for the English "Men of Letters" series. Her most popular novel was the tragic Grania (1892), set on the bleak Aran Islands off the coast of County Galway, which due to its "remarkably feminist" slant is probably also the most likely to interest current readers. In the last years of her life, Emily Lawless moved to England, apparently because of the new political climate in Ireland. Her mental and physical health declined, and she died in Surrey, England, on October 19, 1913.

sources:

Kunitz, Stanley J., ed. British Authors of the Nineteenth Century. NY: H.W. Wilson, 1936.

Todd, Janet, ed. British Women Writers. NY: Continuum, 1989.

Karina L. Kerr , M.A., Ypsilanti, Michigan