William O’Connor Cuffe [Earl of Desart] (1845-98)

Life
[William Ulick O’Connor Cuffe; 4th Viscount and Earl of Desart] b. 10 July 1845; son of John Cuffe and Lady Elizabeth Lucy Campbell; br. of Captain Otway Cuffe, Mayor of Kilkenny; ed. eldest son of 3rd Earl, ed. Eton and Bonn; served as page of honour to the Queen; commissioned as a captain in the Grenadier Guards; inherited title at 20, 1 April 1865; wrote on hunting for London papers; lived at Desart Court in Kilkenny; m. Maria Emma Georgina Preston, but divorced in 1878 - following on intercepted letters from an actor; m. Ellen, dg. of Henri Louis Bischoffstein, April 1881; author of Only a Woman’s Love (1869), Beyond These Voices (1870), dealing with seduction and revenge against a Fenian background;

also wrote Children of Nature: A Modern Love Story (1878), The Honourable Ella: A Tale of Foxshire (1879); Kelverdale: A Novel (1879), Lord and Lady Picadilly (Swan Sonnerrschein 1887); Herne Lodge (Swan Sonnerrschein 1888), The Little Chatelain (1889), a mystery story and his most successful work; Helen’s Vow or a Freak of Fate (1891) Grandborough: A Novel (1894), and The Raid of the “Detrimental” [...] the Great Disappearance of 1862 (1897) - a utopia novel; d. after short illness on his yacht in Falmouth, 15 Sept. 1898; succeeded by his brother Hamilton [Otway]; Countess Desart went on to be a politician in her own right; There is a caricature of Cuffe by Ape for Vanity Fair in 1874. PI IF2 SUTH.

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Works
Novels
  • Only a Woman’s Love (Tinsley Bros. 1869), 2 vols.
  • Beyond These Voices (Tinsley Bros. 1870).
  • Children of Nature: A Story of Modern Love (Tinsley Bros. 1878).
  • The Honourable Ella: A Tale of Foxshire (Hurst & Blackettt 1879).
  • Kelverdale: A Novel (Hurst & Blackett 1879).
  • Lord and Lady Picadilly (Swan Sonnerrschein 1887).
  • Herne Lodge (Swan Sonnerrschein 1888, 1889, 1893), vi., 313pp.
  • The Little Chatelain (Swan Sonnerrschein 1889), 476pp.
  • Helen’s Vow or a Freak of Fate (Swan Sonnerrschein 1891).
  • Grandborough: A Novel (Chapman & Hall 1894).

Also The Raid of the “Detrimental”: Being the true history of the great disappearance of 1862; related by several of those implicated and others; and now first set forth (London: Arthur Ponsby 1897), viii, 424pp. [a novel.]
Short fiction
  • Mervyn O’Connor and Other Tales (Hurst & Blackett 1880).
  • Love and Pride on an Iceberg, and Other Tales (Swan Sonnenschein 1887), 177pp.
Full lsting in COPAC.

 

References
D. J. O’Donoghue,The Poets of Ireland: A Biographical Dictionary (Dublin: Hodges Figgis & Co 1912) cites him as a poet but does not name the novels.

Stephen Brown, Ireland in Fiction (Dublin: Maunsel 1919) - no citations but see Cleeve and Brady, Dictionary of Irish Writers (1985).

John Sutherland, The Longman Companion to Victorian Fiction (Longmans 1988; rep. 1989), fives bio-dates as 1845-1898 [sic]; lists Only a Woman’s Love (Tinsley 1869), a desultory novel; Children of Nature, a Story of Modern London (1878); The Honorable Ella (1879), a tale of ‘Foxshire’; Lord and Lady Picadilly (1887); The Little Chatelaine (1889); his most popular a mystery story, Herne Lodge (1888).

Victorian Novels [website] lists The Raid of the Detrimental [... &c.] (1897) - A lost world in the Atlantic has been transformed into a perfect society. (Available online; accessed 08.07.2023.)

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