Life
?1750-1802 [née Raymond], m. Sir William, Bart and later Rev. William Clay (Bishop of Kildare); published Poems, 2 vols. (1793), and
some unacted plays including Maximian (1800), a translation of Corneille’s five-act tragedy and A Search After Perfection (1814), a five-act comedy as well as Theodora, or The Spanish Daughter
(1800), a tragedy, and a last play called Villario (1814). PIODNB RAF
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References
Dictionary of National Biography calls her an Essex-born lady who married by the Bishop of Kildare in London.
D. J. O’Donoghue, Poets of Ireland (Dublin: Hodges Figgis 1912), lists as Burrell Irish, b. c.1760, on a hint from Sir John Carr in Stranger in Ireland (1803).
Patrick Rafroidi, Irish Literature in English, The Romantic Period, 1789-1850 (Gerrards Cross: Colin Smythe 1980), cites Lady Burrell’s Poems (1793), which includes ‘The Triumph of Nature’ (Vol I, pp.198-202); further,cites Burrell under the heading Irish Ossianids [Rafroidi, pp.156-58], with special reference to her play Comala, performed in the Hanover Square Rooms in 1792 and subtitled ‘a dramatic poem in 3 acts taken from a poem of “Ossian”, bearing the composition date of 1784 and and printed in Poems (1793, pp.47-87) [Rafroidi, p.158].
Rafroidi, Irish Literature in English (1980), Vol. 2 calls calls her Irish after O’Donoghue and Carr and lists Maximian, 5 act trag. (1800); Theodora, trag. (1800); Villario, play (1814); A Search After Perfection, 5 act com. (1814).
Peter Kavanagh, The Irish Theatre (Tralee: The Kerryman 1946), cites Lady Sophia Raymond Burrell (?1750-1802) and lists Comala, dram. poem, from Ossian, performed in Hanover Sq. Rooms, 8vo 1792; Maximiam [?err. for Maximian], trag. from Corneille, unacted, 8vo, 1800; Theodora or The Spanish Daughter, unacted trag., 8vo, 1800.
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