Blackwood, Helen Selina, Countess Of Dufferin

(1807-1867)

   The eldest daughter of Tom Sheridan (younger son of Richard Brinsley Sheridan) and his wife, Caroline Henrietta; afterwards successively Mrs. Blackwood, Lady Dufferin, and Countess of Gifford, songwriter and poet. She married Commander Price Blackwood at the age of seventeen. Although the youngest son of Hans, Lord Dufferin, owing to the death of his two brothers in 1839 he succeeded to the title and estate in Ireland of Baron Dufferin and Clandeboye. He died in 1841 on board a ship off Belfast, aged 47, owing to an accidental overdose of morphia. Lady Dufferin dedicated herself to the education of her only son and to writing. Her chief poems are: "The Charming Woman," "The Mother's Lament," "The Irish Emigrant" (which tells the story of a young man saying goodbye in a graveyard to his wife, Mary, who died in childbirth, as he prepares to leave Ireland to find work in a far-off land).

   Sources: Dictionary of National Biography. Electronic Edition 1.1. Oxford University Press, 1997. English Poetry, Second Edition (http://collections.chadwyck.co.uk/marketing/home_ep2.jsp). The Columbia Granger's Index to Poetry. 11th ed. The Columbia Granger's World of Poetry, Columbia University Press, 2005 (http://www.columbiagrangers.org). The Oxford Anthology of English Poetry, Vol. II: Blake to Heaney. John Wain, ed. Oxford University Press, 1990.