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{{Short description|Irish novelist and poet}}
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[[The Hon.]] '''Emily Lawless''' (17 June 1845{{spaced ndash}}19 October 1913) was an [[List of Irish novelists|Irish novelist]],
==Biography==
She was born at [[Lyons Demesne|Lyons House]] below [[Lyons Hill]], [[Ardclough]], [[County Kildare]]. She spent part of her childhood with the [[Sir John Kirwan|Kirwans of]] [[Castle Hackett]], [[County Galway]], her mother's family, and drew on West of Ireland themes for many of her works. Her grandfather was [[Valentine Lawless, 2nd Baron Cloncurry|Valentine Lawless]], a member of the [[United Irishmen]] and son of a convert from Catholicism to the [[Church of Ireland]]. Her father was Edward Lawless, 3rd [[Baron Cloncurry]] (d. 1869),<ref name= "eb1922" /> thus giving her the [[Courtesy titles in the United Kingdom|title]] of "The Honourable".<ref>{{Cite web|url=http://www.pgil-eirdata.org/html/pgil_datasets/authors/l/Lawless,E/life.htm|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20020711114809/http://www.pgil-eirdata.org/html/pgil_datasets/authors/l/Lawless,E/life.htm|url-status=usurped|archive-date=11 July 2002|title=Emily Lawless|publisher=Princess Grace Irish Library|accessdate=7 September 2010}}</ref> The death of her father when she was a girl plunged the family into financial difficulties which, compounded by her lack of access to family assets as a woman, meant that she relied on income from her books.
Her father was Edward Lawless, 3rd [[Baron Cloncurry]] (d. 1896),<ref name= "eb1922" /> thus giving her the [[Courtesy titles in the United Kingdom|title]] of "The Honourable".<ref>{{Cite web|url=http://www.pgil-eirdata.org/html/pgil_datasets/authors/l/Lawless,E/life.htm|title=Emily Lawless|publisher=Princess Grace Irish Library|accessdate=7 September 2010}}</ref> In contrast her brother Edward Lawless was a landowner with strong Unionist opinions, a policy of not employing Roman Catholics in any position in his household, and chairman of the Property Defence Association set up in 1880 to oppose the [[Land League]] and "uphold the rights of property against organised combination to defraud". The prominent Anglo-Irish unionist and later [[Irish nationalism|nationalist]], [[Irish Home Rule movement|Home Rule]] politician [[Horace Plunkett]] was a cousin. Lord Castletown, [[Bernard FitzPatrick, 2nd Baron Castletown]] was also a cousin. It is widely believed{{Who|date=September 2010}} that she was a lesbian and that Lady Sarah Spencer, dedicatee of ''A Garden Diary'' (1901) was her lover.{{Citation needed|date=September 2010}}▼
▲
According to Betty Webb Brewer, writing in 1983 for the journal of the [[Irish American Cultural Institute]], ''Éire/Ireland'': "An unflagging [[Unionism in Ireland|unionist]], she recognised the rich literary potential in the native tradition and wrote novels with peasant heroes and heroines, Lawless depicted with equal sympathy the [[Anglo-Irish]] landholders." This is the prevalent view of Lawless, yet she unequivocally referred to her Irish "patriotism",<ref>Emily Lawless, 'Traits and Confidences', London: Methuen, 1898, p. 37.</ref> and her unshakeable love of Ireland, and several of her short stories denounce the inequalities brought about by colonialism and landlordism in Ireland. W.B.Yeats wrote scathingly about Lawless's supposed stereotyping of Irish peasants, and his views later contributed to the neglect of her work. Similarly, her initial opposition to female suffrage has been often read as an anti-feminist position (rather than a "[[feminism of difference]]"), yet much of her work makes a strong case for female autonomy, in financial and creative terms, and Lawless was a noted and popular writer in the "[[New Woman]]" movement which swept English fiction and journalism in the late nineteenth century. It has been speculated that she may have been lesbian.<ref name="Raitt1995">{{cite book|author=Suzanne Raitt|title=Volcanoes and Pearl Divers: Essays in Lesbian Feminist Studies|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=A9pkAAAAMAAJ|year=1995|publisher=Onlywomen Press|isbn=978-0-906500-48-4|page=170}}</ref> Beginning in 1911, she lived with Lady Sarah Spencer, dedicatee of ''A Garden Diary'' (1901), at a house named Hazelhatch in [[Gomshall]], Surrey.<ref>{{Cite book |url=https://archive.org/details/newoldwithintrod00sichuoft/page/175/mode/1up |title=New and Old |first=Edith |last=Sichel |publisher=[[Constable and Company]] |page=175 |date=1917 |access-date=2024-06-13 |via=Internet Archive}}</ref><ref>{{Cite book |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=qZ6W1LiIyYYC&pg=PA921 |title=The Field Day Anthology of Irish Writing |volume=V |publisher=[[New York University Press]] |isbn=9780814799079 |page=921 |date=2002 |access-date=2024-06-13 |via=Google Books}}</ref> Lawless died at Gomshall on 19 October 1913.<ref name= "eb1922" >{{Cite EB1922|wstitle=Lawless, Emily}}</ref>
She occasionally wrote under the pen name "Edith Lytton".<ref name="Kirwan2010">{{cite book|author=Jack Kirwan|title=Wheelhouse to Kirwan in Easy Stages: A Voyage Round My Family History (so Far)|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=-MA-AwAAQBAJ&pg=PA117|year=2010|publisher=Lulu.com|isbn=978-1-4466-9743-6|page=117}}</ref>
Some archival material pertaining to Emily Lawless is held in [[Marsh's Library]], Dublin.
==Writings==
Lawless wrote nineteen works of fiction, biography, history, nature studies and poetry, many of which were widely read at the time. She is
<!--No Source Information: [[Image:emilylawlessgrave.jpg|thumb|right|250px|Celtic cross on Emily Lawless's grave in Sussex, England]]-->
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* ''Maelcho'' (1894)
* ''Plain Frances Mowbray and Other Tales'' (1889)
* ''A Colonel of the Empire'' (1895)<ref>{{Cite journal |last=Lawless |first=Emilia |date=6 July 1895 |title=A Colonel of The Empire |url=https://archive.org |journal=The Illustrated London News |volume=107 |pages=9–12 |via=Internet Archive}}</ref>
* [https://archive.org/details/traitsandconfid00lawlgoog ''Traits and Confidences'' (1898)]
* ''Atlantic Rhymes & Rhythms'' (1898)
* [https://archive.org/details/cu31924059205462 ''A Garden Diary'' (1901)]
* [https://archive.org/details/withwildgeese01broogoog ''With The Wild Geese'' (1902)]
* ''[[Maria Edgeworth]]'' (1904)<ref>{{cite book|author=Lawless, Emily|year=1904|publisher=Macmillan|title=Maria Edgeworth|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=fvMUG39dnMwC}}</ref><ref>{{cite journal|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=WTPmAAAAMAAJ&pg=PA400|page=400|volume=23|title =Review of ''Maria Edgeworth'' by Emily Lawless|journal=The Oxford Magazine|date = June 14, 1905|publisher = The Proprietors}}</ref>
* [https://archive.org/details/bookofgillyfourm00lawliala ''Book of Gilly'' (1906)]
* ''The Point of View'' (1909)
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===''Hurrish''===
{{main|Hurrish}}
Some critics identify a theme of noble landlord and noble peasant in her fourth book, ''Hurrish'', a [[Land War]] story set in the [[The Burren|Burren]] [[County Clare]] which was read by [[William Ewart Gladstone]] and said to have influenced his policy. It deals with the theme of Irish hostility to English law. In the course of the book a landlord is assassinated, and Hurrish's mother, Bridget, refuses to identify the murderer, a dull-witted brutal neighbour.
It described the Burren Hills as "skeletons—rain-worn, time-worn, wind-worn—starvation made visible, and embodied in a landscape." The book was criticised by Irish-Ireland journals for its 'grossly exaggerated violence', its embarrassing dialect, staid characters. According to ''[[The Nation (Irish newspaper)|The Nation]]'' "she looked down on peasantry from the pinnacle of her three generation nobility".
Her reputation was damaged by [[William Butler Yeats]] who accused her in a critique of having "an imperfect sympathy with the Celtic nature" and for adopting "theory invented by political journalists and forensic historians
===''Essex'' and ''Grania''===
Her historical novel ''With Essex in Ireland'' was better received and was ahead of its time in developing the [[unreliable narrator]] as a technique. Gladstone mistook it for an authentic Elizabethan document.
Her seventh book, ''Grania'', about
===''With the Wild Geese''===
Unusually for such a strong Unionist, her ''Wild Geese'' poems (1902) became very popular and were widely quoted in nationalist circles, especially the lines:
Two of the poems including "Clare Coast" (source of the above lines) and "After Aughrim" were included in ''The [[Oxford Book of Irish Verse]]'' (1958).<ref>MacDonagh, Donagh & Robinson, Lennox, eds. (1958) ''The Oxford Book of Irish Verse''. Oxford: Clarendon Press; pp. 100-05</ref>
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Her papers are in [[Marsh's Library]] in Dublin.
Emily Lawless Court in [[Bayside, Dublin]] bears her name.<ref>[http://documents.fingalcoco.ie/NorthgatePublicDocs/00543200.pdf Northgate documents]fingalcoco.ie {{Webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20220908101523/http://documents.fingalcoco.ie/NorthgatePublicDocs/00543200.pdf |date=8 September 2022 }}</ref>
==Further reading==▼
* A book of criticism on Lawless—''Emily Lawless (1845-1913): Writing the Interspace'' by Heidi Hansson—was published in 2007 by [http://www.corkuniversitypress.com Cork University Press].▼
* Emily Lawless, ''Grania: The Story of an Island'', edited by Michael O'Flynn (Victorian Secrets, 2013)▼
==References==
{{Reflist}}
▲==Further reading==
== External links ==▼
▲* A book of criticism on Lawless—''Emily Lawless (1845-1913): Writing the Interspace'' by Heidi Hansson—was published in 2007 by Cork University Press.<ref>[http://www.corkuniversitypress.com Cork University Press]
▲* Emily Lawless, ''Grania: The Story of an Island'', edited by Michael O'Flynn (Victorian Secrets, 2013)
{{Library resources box|by=yes|onlinebooksby=yes|viaf=24686958}}
* {{Gutenberg author |id=
* {{Internet Archive author |sname=Emily Lawless}}
{{Authority control}}
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[[Category:1913 deaths]]
[[Category:19th-century Irish writers]]
[[Category:19th-century Irish women writers]]
[[Category:20th-century Irish writers]]
[[Category:20th-century Irish women writers]]
[[Category:Anglo-Irish women poets]]
[[Category:Anglo-Irish poets]]
[[Category:Irish Anglicans]]
[[Category:Irish historical novelists]]
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[[Category:Irish unionists]]
[[Category:Irish women poets]]
[[Category:
[[Category:Women historical novelists]]
[[Category:Writers of historical fiction set in the early modern period]]
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