Melasina Trench

Life
1768-1827 [Melesina Chenevix St. George Trench; née Chenevix] b. Dublin; edited The Leadbeater Papers (2nd edn. 1862), being MSS and letters of Mary Leadbeater; published poetry as Campaspe: an Historical Tale (1815), Laura’s Dream, or The Moonlanders (1816), and Aubrey (1818); her son Richard Chenevix Trench [q.v.], then Dean of Westminster and later Archbishop of Dublin, edited her travel journals and letters as Remains (1862), compared to Walpole’s Letters. [DIW] PI DIB DIW ODNB

 

Works
Poetry
  • Campaspe: An Historical Tale, and Other Poems (Southampton: Printed by T. Baker 1815).
  • Laura's dream : or, The Moonlanders (London: J. Hatchard 1816), 47 lvs. [with her Campaspe, 1815, and her Ellen: A Ballad, 1815].
  • Ellen: a Ballad, Founded On a Recent Fact, and Other Poems (Bath: Booksellers of Bath;; Printed by R. Cruttwell 1815).
  • Aubrey: in Five Cantos (Southampton: Printed by T. Baker 1818), 78pp.
  • A Monody On the Death of Mr. Grattan (London: Printed by C. Wood for J. Ridgway 1820).
Prose
  • Thoughts of a Parent, on Education (London: Printed by Harvey, Darton, and Co., Gracechurch-Street, for I. Fletcher 1823), q.pp.
  • Journal: Kept During a Visit to Germany in 1799, 1800, ed. by the Dean of Westminster [Richard Chenevix Trench] ([London]: [Savill and Edwards, printers] [1861] viii, 97pp. [Preface dated 1861; TCD copy donate by John Foster].
  • The Remains of the late Mrs. Richard Trench: being selections from her journals, letters, & other papers, ed. by her son, the Dean of Westminster [Richard Chenevix Trench] [2d edn., rev.] (London: Parker and Bourn 1862),viii, 525 p.
Edited
  • The Leadbeater Papers: A Selection from the MSS. and Correspondence of Mary Leadbeater [2nd edn.] (London: Bell and Daldy 1862) - Vol. 1: The annals of Ballitore, with a memoir of the author; Vol. 2: Unpublished letters of Edmund Burke, and the correspondence of Mrs. Richard Trench and Rev. George Crabbe.
Miscellaneous
  • Melesina Trench: Poems and Letters from her Journal (Chawleigh [England]: Melesina Press [1977]), 12 unnum. lvs. [of] pls.; facs.; 22 cm; 40 copies on paper handmade by Timothy Powell of Sheepstor, Devon; mounted pls. and uncut leaves.]

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Criticism
See Michael McCraith, ‘The Saga of James MacPherson’s Ossian’, in Linen Hall Review (Sept 1991), pp.5-9.

 

References
D. J. O’Donoghue, Poets of Ireland (Dublin: Hodges Figgis 1912) , notes that her travel journals were edited by her son R. C. T., Archbishop of Dublin, as Remains (1862); also [anon.,] Campaspe and other poems (Southampton 1815), and [anon.,] Laura’s Dream (London 1816).

 

Notes
Young Werther [of Goethe]: Michael McCraith quotes a letter from Melasine Trench in Paris to her husband in Ireland, 1804: ‘I regret the sensibility I wasted on Werther, as a girl, and shall never let it appear in my house now that I am the mother of a family ... [During youth I] shed torrents of tears over it, adopted its opinions, and laid the first stone of that false taste by which I was for many years subjugated.’

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