Sydney Owenson Lady Morgan

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Standard Name: Morgan, Sydney Owenson,,, Lady
Birth Name: Sydney Owenson
Titled: Lady Sydney Owenson
Married Name: Lady Sydney Morgan
Pseudonym: S. O.
Nickname: Glorvina
Nickname: The Wild Irish Girl
In her capacities as poet, novelist, and travel writer with a sharp eye for culture and politics, SOLM spoke for the early movement of Irish nationalism. She also wrote plays and verse. Her reputation, once dragged down by her politics, is now rising.
Full-length portrait of Sydney Owenson, Lady Morgan, by René Théodore Berthon, c. 1818. She sits in an ornate chair, with an elbow on a desk bearing paper, an inkwell, and a vase of flowers; her head rests pensively on her hand. She is wearing a black Empire-style dress with short puff sleeves, and holding a quill pen. A blue mantle with plentiful white fur trim is thrown carelessly on her chair. National Gallery of Ireland.
Title-page of "Miss Owenson" (later Sydney Owenson, Lady Morgan)'s "The Lay of an Irish Harp or Metrical Fragments", New York, 1808 (the year after it appeared in England). The page features an over-sized Irish harp resting against what must be intended as a weeping willow.

Connections

Connections Author name Excerpt
Friends, Associates Lady Caroline Lamb
LCL was for most of her adult life a good friend of Sydney Morgan , to whom she confided many stories of her childhood and youth, which Morgan preserved in her diaries. She later helped...
Friends, Associates Catherine Gore
CG was acquainted with a number of important literary figures. Before leaving London for the Continent she attended an assembly given by Rosina Bulwer-Lytton to which Disraeli , Lady Morgan , and Letitia Landon also...
Friends, Associates Olivia Clarke
Sydney Morgan noted her sister OC 's generous goodness to old Molly Cane , their servant and mother-figure, who was dying and was full of plans for her funeral, coffin, and wake.
Morgan, Sydney Owenson, Lady. Lady Morgan’s Memoirs. Editors Dixon, William Hepworth and Geraldine Jewsbury, AMS Press, 1975, 2 vols.
2: 321-2
Friends, Associates Mary Russell Mitford
She knew most of the literary women of her day, including Felicia Hemans (who wrote to ask her for an autograph),
L’Estrange, Alfred Guy Kingham, editor. The Friendships of Mary Russell Mitford as Recorded in Letters from Her Literary Correspondents. Hurst and Blackett, 1882, 2 vols.
1: 173-4
Jane Porter , Amelia Opie (that warm-hearted person),
Mitford, Mary Russell. The Life of Mary Russell Mitford: Told by Herself in Letters To Her Friends. Editor L’Estrange, Alfred Guy Kingham, Harper and Brothers, 1870, 2 vols.
2: 213
Friends, Associates Geraldine Jewsbury
GJ 's later social circle included many writers: Sydney, Lady Morgan , who became a close friend and for whom GJ acted as amanuensis; author Lady Llanover ; author and publisher Douglas Jerrold ; and...
Friends, Associates Anne Plumptre
Their friends included Eliza Fenwick , Helen Maria Williams , Susannah Taylor , Mary Hays , Amelia Opie , Thomas Holcroft , John Thelwall , and other radicals. AP supported Thelwall's local electioneering, and Ann Jebb
Friends, Associates Helen Maria Williams
Sydney Morgan visited HMW , one of the idols of her girlhood,
Stevenson, Lionel. The Wild Irish Girl: The Life of Sydney Owenson, Lady Morgan (1776-1859). Reissued, Russell and Russell, 1969.
169
and was disappointed to find her a bulky, formless and faded old woman.
qtd. in
Stevenson, Lionel. The Wild Irish Girl: The Life of Sydney Owenson, Lady Morgan (1776-1859). Reissued, Russell and Russell, 1969.
170
Friends, Associates Anne Plumptre
Elizabeth Inchbald had written in veiled terms to Morgan before the latter's marriage of her own brief and unhappy acquaintance (something like patronage) withAP . This experience (which, she says, was well known to...
Friends, Associates Thomas Moore
His social circle included prominent literary women: Mary Tighe , sisters Lady Morgan (Sydney Owenson) and Olivia Clarke , Mary Shelley , Marguerite Blessington , Louisa Stuart Costello , and Caroline Norton . He knew...
Friends, Associates L. E. L.
By the time LEL began living alone, she was well-known in literary circles. She became a good friend of Emma Roberts and Rosina Bulwer-Lytton around this time, and gradually became a recognized London public figure...
Friends, Associates Eliza Lynn Linton
Eliza Lynn met a number of women authors who were once applauded but later complacently forgotten . . . . as literary fossils.
Linton, Eliza Lynn, and Beatrice Harraden. My Literary Life. Hodder and Stoughton, 1899.
85
She contended that Women who wrote were then few and far...
Friends, Associates Adelaide O'Keeffe
AOK 's literary friendships with Sydney, Lady Morgan , and with Jane Porter were carried on, perforce, largely by letter.
O’Keeffe, Adelaide, and John O’Keeffe. “Memoirs”. O’Keeffe’s Legacy to his Daughter, edited by Adelaide O’Keeffe and Adelaide O’Keeffe, G. Whittaker, 1834, p. x - xxxv.
xi
Friends, Associates Elizabeth Ham
Among the many officers visiting the Ham family at Ardnaree was Napier , later the author of the History of the Peninsular War. He had little disputes
Ham, Elizabeth. Elizabeth Ham, by Herself, 1783-1820. Editor Gillett, Eric, Faber and Faber, 1945.
103
with EH about politics and religion...
Health Lady Caroline Lamb
Georgina Hawtre wrote from Brocket Hall in Hertfordshire to tell Sydney Morgan of LCL 's alarming state of health since undergoing an operation.
Morgan, Sydney Owenson, Lady. Lady Morgan’s Memoirs. Editors Dixon, William Hepworth and Geraldine Jewsbury, AMS Press, 1975, 2 vols.
2: 245
Health Lady Caroline Lamb
She had already undergone a severe shock on hearing of his death, and had been fencing with John Cam Hobhouse about the return of letters on both sides. Soon the family was employing two female...

Timeline

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Texts

Morgan, Sydney Owenson, Lady. Twelve Original Hibernian Melodies. Preston, 1807.
Morgan, Sydney Owenson, Lady. Woman and Her Master. Henry Colburn, 1840, 2 vols.
Morgan, Sydney Owenson, Lady. Woman and Her Master. Cambridge University Press, 2010, 2 vols. , http://www.cambridge.org/series/sSeries.asp?code=CLOR.
Morgan, Sydney Owenson, Lady. Woman; or, Ida of Athens. Longman, Hurst, Rees, and Orme, 1809, 4 vols.