Tynan, Katharine

(1861-1931)

   Born at Whitehall, Clondalkin, County Dublin, the daughter of a farmer, her education was curtailed by measles, which affected her eyes. Through her writing she supported the fight for Irish home rule in the 1880s. After her first collection of poems, Louise de la Vallière: And Other Poems (de la Vallière was the mistress to Louis XIV of France from 1661 to 1667) in 1885 she went on to publish seventeen more collections, more than onehundred novels, five volumes of her autobiography, twelve collections of short stories, and three plays. She revised The Cabinet of Irish Literature (4 volumes, 1902-05), and added a predominantly women's volume. In 1883 she married Henry Albert Hinkson, a barrister and novelist, who died in 1919. She died at Wimbledon, London. Her poems are dominated by the combined influences of Catholicism and Irish patriotism. Some of her other poetry publications: Irish Love-Songs, 1891. The Rhymed Life of St. Patrick, 1907. New Poems, 1911. Herb O'Grace, 1918. Collected Poems, 1930. Some of her poems: "Ivy of Ireland," "All in the April Evening," "Joining the Colours," "Shamrock Song," "The Broken Soldier," "The Nightingale," "Winter Sunset."

   Sources: A Sacrifice of Praise: An Anthology of Christian Poetry in English from Caedmon to the Mid-Twentieth Century. James H. Trott, ed. Cumberland House Publishing, 1999. An Anthology of Irish Verse: The Poetry of Ireland from Mythological Times to the Present. Padraic Colum, ed. Liveright, 1948. Carmina Mariana: An English Anthology in Verse in Honour of or in Relation to The Blessed Virgin Mary. Orby Shipley, ed. Burns and Oates, 1894. Dictionary of National Biography. Electronic Edition 1.1. Oxford University Press, 1997. Encyclopædia Britannica Ultimate Reference Suite DVD, 2006. English Poetry: Author Search. Chadwyck-Healey Ltd., 1995 (http://www.lib.utexas.edu:8080/search/epoetry/author.html). Biography of Katharine Tynan (http://www.irishwriters-online.com/katharinetynan.html). Lyra Celtica: An Anthology of Representative Celtic Poetry. E.A. Sharp and J. Matthay, eds. John Grant, 1924. Scars Upon My Heart: Women's Poetry and Verse of the First World War. Catherine W. Reilly, ed. Virago Press, 1981. 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 Home Book of Modern Verse. Burton Egbert Stevenson, ed. Henry Holt, 1953. The Oxford Companion to English Literature. 6th edition. Margaret Drabble, ed. Oxford University Press, 2000.