Katharine Tynan (1861-1931)

Katharine Tynan (1861-1931)


Life

[Katharine Hinkson, or Hinkson-Tynan or Tynan Hinkson; recte Katharine, freq. Katherine;] poet and novelist; b. 23 Jan. [vars. 21 Jan.; 23 Jan.; 1 Feb.], at Whitehall, a dairy farm, at Clondalkin, Co. Dublin [var. Tallaght, site of Dublin Tourism plaque]; one of 12 children of Andrew Cullen Tynan and Elizabeth [née O’Reilly] - an invalid for much of Tynan"s childhoo; her sociable father was elected a Parnellite member of Dublin Corporation, in 1891; a sister Mary died in childhood, 1868; another, Norah (1865-1932; m. John O’Mahony); ed. at Dominican Convent of St Catherine of Siena, Drogheda, for 6 years, to 14; devoutly religious and considered the Catholic novitiate for nuns; suffered chronic eye ulcers of the eye in childhood resulting in myopia; first poem publ. in Graphic, 1878; mbr. of Ladies’ Land League, with Anna Parnell, Mrs A. M. Sullivan, et al.; early friendship with Dora Sigerson, Frances Wynne, and Sarah Atkinson; acted as her father’s companion whom she followed in supporting Parnell after the Split; contrib. poems to Irish Monthly from 1880; contrib. to Hibernia (Feb. 1883); contrib. to Dublin University Review (Aug. 1885); met and befriended Gerard Manley Hopkins in 1886;

 
issued Louise de la Vallière and Other Poems (1885), her first book, financed by her father and an immediate success, resulting in a 2nd edition; heavily influenced by Christina Rossetti and later called ‘too full of English influence to be quite Irish’ by Yeats in a review of Ballads and Lyrics (Evening Herald, Jan. 1892), first met W. B. Yeats (‘all dreams and gentleness’), June 1885, in connection with Charles Oldham, ed., Dublin Univ. Review; the DUR editor;) advised by him in an early letter to make a speciality of her Irish Catholicism; encouraged by John O’Leary, she published a second volume, Shamrocks (1887), with exclusively Irish subject-matter; contrib. ‘Irish Authors and Poets’ to Irish Fireside [new ser.], No. 1 (1887, pp.8-9, and pp.24-25); praised by Yeats on the grounds that ‘in finding her nationality, she has also found herself’ (Prose, 120); lightly throws off marriage-proposal from W. B. Yeats (“For heaven’s sake, you go to the devil!”), Dec. 1890?
 
her suggestion to Yeats that he should try an Irish subject resulted in Wanderings of Oisin; idolised Parnell and supported him after his downfall; lived in Ireland till her marriage to Henry Albert Hinkson, a barrister and novelist and contemporary of Yeats in Erasmus Smith High School who converted to Catholicism, moving to London on marriage, 1893, living at Ealing and Notting Hill; suffered the loss of first two sons in infancy; revised The Cabinet of Irish Literature, formerly compiled by Charles Read (4 vols. 1879), likewise in 4 vols. (1902-03), adding a predominantly women’s volume and eliminating some non-literary writings from Charles Read’s selection; returned to Ireland with a further two sons and one dg., settling at Shankill, 1911; Hinkson was appt. magistrate at Claremorris, Co. Mayo, where they lived from 1914; heavy drinker, he deid in 1919; left Ireland and settled in London, travelling widely with her dg. Pamela [Hinkson, q.v.];
 
contrib. poems to Studies, 1913-22; also in Irish Review, Aug. 1913; issued several volumes of poems supporting Redmond’s Volunteers in WWI, notably Flower of Youth (1915) - the title poem of which was widely circulated - and The Holy War (1916); both her sons joined in the wartime British Army, one serving in France and the other in Palestine - alongside Francis Ledwidge [q.v.], a personal friend; wrote poetry celebrating the capture of Jerusalem in crusade-style, and reacted strongly against the Easter Rising which she called a ‘rebellion’; published over 100 novels [var. 105 novels and 12 story collections] of social protest and poetry collections, and five vols. of autobiography valuable for her recollections of the Parnells and figures of the literary revival - incl. Twenty-Five Years (1913); The Middle Years (1916); The Years of Shadow (1919), and The Wandering Years (1922), and Memories (1924); Yeats, a life-long correspondent, described her as ‘very plain’ but was always affectionate towards her;
 
she sold her letters from Yeats to John Quinn for £100 in 1920 (‘My life is in my poems’, 16 Sept. 1888), several dozen of which later appeared with his early Letters without his permission or the opportunity to correct; though severely myopic all her life, Tynan produced 100 novels, 12 collections of short stories, 3 plays and anthologies, all commenced after her husband’s death, as well as innumerable articles on social questions such as poor children and women’s working conditions; considered unique among Irish writers in her devotion to Catholicism and women’s rights; d. 2 April 1931, at Wimbledon; buried beside her friend Alice Meynell in Kensall Cem. (London); a bespectacled portrait of her in oil by John Butler Yeats (1887) is held in the Municipal Gallery, Dublin; she wrote “The Wind That Shakes the Barley”, latterly the title of a film on the Anglo-Irish war directed by Ken Loach with Cillian Murphy in the leading role (2006). ODNB JMC PI DBIV IF NCBE DIW DIB DIH DIL OCEL KUN FDA KUN SUTH OCIL
 
Note on family: According to one record formerly quoted above, Katharine Tynan had five pregnancies and three living children of whom only Pamela survived beyond childhood. In her memoir we learn, however, that in 1921 a son Toby married one Moira Pilkington, the neice of Sir Thomas Esmonde and a great-great-great-grandaughter of Henry Grattan. (See The Wandering Years, 1922, Chap. XXIV [p.283] - at Internet online; information and link provided by Anne van der Weerden - 09.12.2018.
 

Katharine Tynan

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Works
Poetry
  • Louise de la Vallière and Other Poems (London: Kegan Paul & Co. 1885) [incl. ‘Thoreau at Walden’]; Do. [another edn.] (1886).
  • Shamrocks (London: Kegan Paul & Co. 1887).
  • Ballads and Lyrics (London: Kegan Paul & Co . 1891).
  • Cuckoo Song[s] (London: Elkin Mathews and John Lane 1894).
  • The Wind in the Trees: A Book of Country Verse (London: Grant Richards 1898).
  • Innocencies: A Book of Verse (London: Bullen 1905); Do. [facs. rep.] (Wentworth Press 2019), 78pp. [see contents].
  • Poems (London: Lawrence & Bullen 1910).
  • A Little Book of Twenty-four Carols (Portland, Maine: Thomas B Mosher 1907).
  • New Poems (London: Sidgwick & Jackson 1911).
  • Irish Poems (London: Sidgwick & Jackson 1912) [var 1913], Do. [another edn.] (NY: Benziger Bros. 1914).
  • The Rhymed Life of St. Patrick (London: Burns & Oates 1907), ills. [by Lindsay Symington], 32pp. [large folio].
  • Flower of Youth: Poems in War Time (London: Sidgwick & Jackson 1915), 80pp.
  • The Holy War: Poems (London: Sidgwick & Jackson 1916), 71pp.
  • Late Songs (London: Sidgwick & Jackson 1917).x'
  • Evensong (Oxford: Basil Blackwell 1922).
  • Twilight Songs (Oxford: Basil Blackwell 1927).
Collected editions
  • Twenty-one Poems of Katharine Tynan, sel. by W. B. Yeats (Dundrum: Dun Emer Press MCMVII [1907]) [200 copies printed; digital copy at Penn U. - see contents].
  • Collected Poems (London: Macmillan 1930), foreword by “Æ” [George Russell].
  • Poems of Katherine [sic] Tynan, ed. Monk Gibbon (Dublin: Allen Figgis 1963).
Fiction
  • The Land I Love Best (London: Unwin Bros 1890); Do. (London: CTS 1899), and Do. [another edn.] (London: Gresham Press/Unwin Bros. 1899).
  • A Nun, Her Friends, and Her Order (London: Kegan Paul & Co 1891), biog. of Mother Mary Xavier Fallon.
  • A Cluster of Nuts, Being Sketches among My Own People (London: Lawrence & Bullen 1894), Do. [another edn.] (1895).
  • An Isle in the Water (London: A. & C. Black 1895), Do. Do. [another edn.] (1896), Do. [another edn.] (London: Adam & Charles Black 1904).
  • Miracle Plays - Our Lord’s Coming and Childhood (London: John Lane 1895).
  • The Way of A Maid (London: Lawrence & Bullen 1895).
  • The Land of Mist and Mountain (London: Unwin Bros. [1895]), and Do. as A [sic] Land of Mist and Mountain (London: CTS 1895).
  • A Lover’s Breast Knot (London: E Mathews 1896).
  • Oh, What a Plague is Love (London: A & C Black 1896), and Do. Do. [another edn.] [Sixpenny Edition] (London: A. & C. Black, 1904).
  • The Handsome Brandons: A Story for Girls (London: Blackie & Son 1899).
  • The Dear Irish Girl (London: Smith, Elder & Co. 1899).
  • Led by a Dream (London: CTS 1899).
  • The Queen’s Page (London: Lawrence & Bullen 1899), Do. [another edn.] (NY: Benziger Bros. 1900).
  • She Walks in Beauty (London: Smith, Elder & Co. 1899).
  • A Daughter of Kings [sic] (London: Smith, Elder & Co 1900), other edns., [NY: Benziger 1905, London: Eveleigh Nash 1905), and Do. [another edn.] (London: Hodder & Stoughton [1910)].
  • A Daughter of the Fields (London: Smith, Elder & Co. 1900), Do. [another edn.] (London: Hodder & Stoughton [1910]).
  • The Adventures of Carlo (London: Blackie & Son [1900]), Do. [another edn.], [Pinnacle Library Series] (London & Glasgow: Blackie & Son 1932).
  • Three Fair Maids; or, The Burkes of Barrymore (London: Blackie & Son 1901), Do. [another edn.] (1909).
  • That Sweet Enemy (London: Archibald Constable 1901), Do. [another edn.] (Philadelphia: J. B. Lippincott 1901), Do. [another edn.] [Constable Sixpenny Series] (London: Constable [1908]).
  • The Great Captain (London: Constable [1901]), Do. [another edn.] (NY: Benziger Bros. 1902).
  • The Golden Lily (London: Constable [1901]), Do. [another edn.] (NY: Benziger Bros 1902).
  • A Union of Hearts (London: J. Nisbet & Co. [1901]).
  • A Girl of Galway (London: Blackie & Son 1902), Do. [another edn.] [1914].
  • The Handsome Quaker (London: A. H. Bullen 1902).
  • A King’s Woman (London: Hurst & Blackett 1902).
  • Love of Sisters (London: Smith, Elder 1902).
  • A Red, Red Rose (London: Eveleigh Nash 1903), Do. [another edn.] (London: Ward, Lock & Co. 1931).
  • The Honourable Molly (London: Smith, Elder 1903), Do. [another edn.] [Newnes Sixpenny Novels] (1907).
  • Julia (London: Smith, Elder 1904), Do. [another edn.] (1905), Do. [another edn.] [Sixpenny Novel Ser., No. 103 (London: Daily Mail [1910]).
  • Judy’s Lovers (London: FV White & Co.1904).
  • Fortune’s Favourite (London: White & Co. 1905).
  • Luck of the Fairfaxes, A Story for Girls (London: Collins’s Clear-Type Press [1905]), 397pp., 7 b/w ills.
  • Innocencies (London: A. H. Bullen/Dublin: Maunsel & Co. 1905), Do. [another edn.] (Chicago: A. C. McClurg 1905).
  • Dick Pentreath (London: Smith, Elder 1905).
  • For the White Rose (London: Constable 1905), Do. [another edn.] (NY: Benziger Bros. 1905).
  • The Adventures of Alicia (London: FV White 1906).
  • The Story of Bawn (London: Smith, Elder 1906), Do. [another edn.] (Chicago: A. C. McClurg 1907).
  • For Maisie, a Love Story (London: Hodder & Stoughton 1906).
  • The Yellow Domino and Other Stories (London: F. V. White & Son 1906).
  • A Little Book for Mary Gill’s Friends (Petersfield: Pear Tree Press 1906).
  • A Little Courtesier (London: JM Dent & co. [1906]).
  • Her Ladyship (London: Smith, Elder 1907).
  • The Story of Our Lord for Children (Dublin: Sealy, Bryers & Co. 1907), Do. [another edn.], col. ills. (London: Burns, Oates & Washbourne 1923).
  • Peggy, the Daughter (London: Cassell & Co. 1907), Do. [another edn.] [Cassell’s Sixpenny Novel Series] (London: Cassell & Co. 1912).
  • Experience, poems (London: A. H. Bullen 1908).
  • Men and Maids, or the Lovers’ Way (Dublin: Sealy, Bryers 1908).
  • Father Mathew [The Saint Nicholas Series] (London: Burns, Oates & Washbourne 1908).
  • The Lost Angel (London: John Milne 1908), Do. [another edn.] (Phil: JB Lippincott 1908).
  • Mary Grey (London: Cassell 1908), other edns. (1909, 1911).
  • Love of Sisters (London: Smith, Elder 1908).
  • The House of the Crickets (London: Smith, Elder 1908).
  • The Book of Flowers, with Frances Maitland (London: Smith & Elder 1909).
  • Lauds (London: Enfield 1909).
  • Kitty Aubrey (London: James Nisbet & co. 1909).
  • Her Mother’s Daughter (London: Smith, elder, and Co. 1909), Do. [another edn.] (London: Murray [n.d.]).
  • Peggy the Daughter (London: Cassell 1909).
  • Cousins and Others (London: TW Laurie 1909).
  • The House of the Secret (London: James Clarke & Co. 1910).
  • Betty Carew (London: Smith, Elder & Co.1910).
  • Freda (London & NY: Cassell & Co 1910).
  • The Story of Cecilia (London: Smith, Elder & Co. 1911), Do. [another edn.] (NY: Benziger Bros. 1911).
  • The Story of Clarice (London: James Clarke & co. 1911).
  • Paradise Farm (NY: Duffield 1911).
  • Princess Katherine [sic] (NY: Duffield 1911), Do. [another edn.] (London: Ward, Lock & Co. 1912).
  • Rose of the Garden (London: Constable 1912), Do. [another edn.] (Indianapolis: Bobbs-Merrill 1913).
  • Heart o’ Gold, or The Little Princess (London: SW Partridge & Co. [1912]).
  • The Unbeliever, a Romance of Lourdes (London: Burns, Oates & Washbourne 1912).
  • Honey, My Honey (London: Sith, elder & Co. 1912).
  • A Midsummer Rose (London: Smith, Elder 1913), 312pp.
  • A Mesalliance (NY: Duffield 1913).
  • Miss Pratt of Paradise Farm (London: Smith, Elder & Co. 1913).
  • John Bulteel’s Daughters ((London: Smith, Elder & Co. 1914).
  • Molly, My Heart’s Delight (London: Smith, Elder & Co. 1914).
  • The Daughter of the Manor (London: Blackie & Son 1914).
  • The Flower of Peace: Devotional Poetry (London: Burns & Oates 1914) [vellum de luxe], and Do. [another edn.] (NY: Charles Scribner’s Sons 1915).
  • A Shameful Inheritance (London: Cassell & Co. 1914).
  • A Little Radiant Girl (London: Blackie & Son 1914, [1937]).
  • Lovers’ Meeting (London: T. W. Laurie 1914), Do. [another edn.] (London & Melbourne: Ward, Lock & Co. 1932), (iv), 5-320pp.
  • Men, Not Angels, and Other Tales Told to Girls (London: Burns, Oates & Washbourne 1914).
  • The Squire’s Sweetheart (London: Ward, Lock & Co. 1913).
  • Countrymen All, Tales (Dublin & London: Maunsel & Co. 1915).
  • The House of the Foxes (London: Smith, Elder & Co. 1915).
  • The Curse of Castle Eagle (NY: Duffield 1915).
  • Since First I Saw Your Face’ (London: Hutchinson & Co. 1915).
  • Margery Dawe (London & Glasgow: Blackie & Son 1916, rep. [1934]).
  • The Web of Fraulein (London: Hodder & Stoughton 1916).
  • John-a-Dreams (London: Smith, Elder & Co. 1916).
  • The West Wind (London: Constable 1916).
  • The Rattle-snake (London: Ward, Lock & Co. 1917).
  • Kit (London: Smith, Elder & Co. 1917), 352pp.
  • Miss Mary (London: John Murray 1917).
  • Herb o’ Grace, Poems in War-time (London: Sidgwick & Jackson 1918).
  • My Love’s But a Lassie (London: Ward, Lock & Co. 1918, 1932).
  • Miss Gascoigne (London: John Murray 1918).
  • Love of Brothers (London: Constable & Co. 1919).
  • The Man from Australia (London: W. Collins & Sons 1919), Do. [another edn.] [Novel Library Series (London: London Book Co. [1913]).
  • Denys the Dreamer (London: W. Collins & Sons 1920), later eds. (NY: Benziger Bros 1921.
  • London: Collins 1930).
  • The House (London: W. Collins & Sons 1920).
  • Bitha’s Wonderful Year (London: Humphrey Milford [1921]).
  • The Second Wife [with] A July Rose (London: John Murray 1921).
  • Sally Victrix (London: Collins 1921).
  • A Mad Marriage (London: Collins 1922).
  • White Ladies (London: Eveleigh Nash & Grayson 1922).
  • The House on the Bogs (London: Constable & Co./NY: Houghton-Mifflin 1922).
  • Pat, the Adventurer (London & Melbourne: Ward, Lock & Co. 1923).
  • They Loved Greatly (London: Eveleigh Nash & Grayson 1923).
  • Mary Beaudesurt, V.S. ((London: W. Collins & Son 1923).
  • The Golden Rose (London: Eveleigh Nash & Grayson 1924).
  • Wives (London: Hurst & Blackett [1924]).
  • The House of Doom (London: Eveleigh Nash & Grayson 1924).
  • Dear Bountiful Lady (London: Ward, Lock & Co. 1925).
  • Life in the Occupied Area (London: Hutchinson & Co. 1925).
  • Miss Phibbs (London & Melbourne: Ward, Lock & Co. 1925).
  • The Moated Grange (London: W. Collins & Sons 1926), reiss. as The Night of Terror (London: W. Collins & Sons [1923]).
  • The Infatuation of Peter (London: W. Collins & Sons 1926).
  • The Heiress of Wyke (London & Melbourne: Ward, Lock & Co. 1926).
  • The Briar Bush Maid (London & Melbourne: Ward, Lock & Co. 1926).
  • A Dog Book (London: Hutchinson & Co. [1926]).
  • The Face in the Picture (London & Melbourne: Ward, Lock & Co. 1927).
  • Haroun of London (London: W. Collins & Sons 1927).
  • The Wild Adventure (London & Melbourne: Ward, Lock & Co. 1927).
  • The Respectable Lady (London: Cassell & Co. 1927), Do. [another edn.] (London: Collins [n.d.]).
  • Castle Perilous (London & Melbourne: Ward, Lock & Co. 1928), Do. [another edn.] (1929).
  • The House in the Forest (London & Melbourne: Ward, Lock & Co. 1928).
  • Lover of Women (London: W. Collins & Sons 1928).
  • A Fine Gentleman (London & Melbourne: Ward, Lock & Co. 1929).
  • The Most Charming Family (London & Melbourne: Ward, Lock & Co. 1929).
  • The Rich Man (London: W. Collins & Sons 1929), Do. [another edn.] (1930).
  • The River (London: W. Collins & Sons 1929), Do. [another edn.] [Novel Library] [1934].
  • The Admirable Simmons (London: Ward, Lock & Co. 1930).
  • Grayson’s Girl (London: W. Collins & Sons 1930), Do. [another edn.] (London: Mellifont Pres [1952]).
  • The Playground (London & Melbourne: Ward, Lock & Co. 1930).
  • Philippa’s Lover (London & Melbourne: Ward, Lock & Co. 1931).
  • Delia’s Orchard (London & Melbourne: Ward, Lock & Co. 1931).
  • A Lonely Maid (London: Ward, Lock & Co. 1931).
  • The Forbidden Way (London: W. Collins & Sons 1931).
  • The Other Man (London: Ward, Lock & Co. 1932).
  • The Pitiful Lady (London & Melbourne: Ward, Lock & Co. 1932).
  • An International Marriage (London & Melbourne: Ward, Lock & Co. 1933).
  • Connor’s Wood (London: W. Collins & Sons 1933).
  • The House of Dreams (London & Melbourne: Ward, Lock & Co. 1934).
  • A Lad Was Born (London: W. Collins & Sons 1934), Do. [abridged edn.] (London: Mellifont P. [1945]).
Collected fiction
  • Peter van de Kamp, ed., Katharine Tynan: Irish Stories, 1893-1900 (Univ. of Leiden Press 1993) [incl. “A Martyr Indeed”; “How Mary Came Home”].
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Autobiography
  • Twenty-five Years: Reminiscences (London: Smith, Elder & Co. 1913), viii. 355pp. [with port.].
  • The Middle Years: A Memoir (London: Constable 1916).
  • The Years of the Shadow (London: Constable & Co.; NY: Houghton-Mifflin 1919), viii, 343pp.
  • The Wandering Years, a memoir (London: Constable & Co./NY: Houghton-Mifflin 1922).
  • Memories (London: Eveleigh Nash & Grayson 1924) [see details].
Anthologies
  • ed., Love Songs of Ireland [Cameo Series] (London: T. F.isher Unwin 1892), 8o. [uniform with W. B. Yeats, The Countess Kathleen].
  • ed., The Wild Harp: A Selection from Irish Poetry (London: Sidgwick & Jackson 1913), ills. C. M. Watts [see details].
  • ed., The Cabinet of Irish Literature, in succession to Charles A. Read [revision of his edn.], 4 vols. (London: Gresham Publishing Co. 1902-1903), [see details].
  • ed. [comp.], The Child at Prayer, A Book of Devotion for the Young (London: Burns, Oates & Co. 1923).
  • The Augustan Books of Irish Poetry, Katharine Tynan (London: Ernest Benn [1931]), intro. by Pamela Hinkson [dg.; cf. Dora Sigerson Shorter].
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Miscellaneous
  • A Book of Memory: The Birthday Book of the Blessed Dead (London: Hodder & Stoughton [1906]); Do. [another edn.] (1907); Do., rep. as A Little Book for John O’Mahony’s Friends (Petersfield: Pear Tree Books P. 1906), and Do. [another edn.] (Portland, Maine: Thomas B. Mosher 1909), with memoir of her sister’s husband by Katharine Tynan.
  • Lord Edward: A Study in Romance (London: Smith, Elder & Co. 1916).
  • Ireland [Peeps at Ireland - in Peeps at Many Lands Series] (London: A. & C. Black 1907, 1927) [see extract].
  • Frances Wynne: ‘A Memory, in Wynne’, Whisper! [Vigo Cabinet Series. No. 35] (1908), 8º .
  • Elsie E. Morton, ed., Maxims from the Writing [sic] of Katharine Tynan [The Angelus Series] [1934].
See also ...
  • W. B. Yeats, Letters to Katharine Tynan, ed. Roger McHugh (1953).

Bibliographical details

Innocencies: A Book of Verse (London: Bullen 1905); Do. [facs. rep.] (Wentworth Press 2019), 78pp.

Twenty-one Poems of Katharine Tynan, sel. by W. B. Yeats (Dundrum: Dun Emer Press MCMVII [1907]), pp. CONTENTS [Page]; Sheep and Lambs [1]; Mater Dei [2]; Lambs [3]; Old Song Re-sung [3]; Easter [4]; The Weeping Babe [5]; 'Adveniat Regnum Tuum' [6]; The Legend of St. Austin and the Child [7]; Immortality [12]; The Only Child [13]; The Nurse [14]; Of St. Francis and the Ass [17]; St. Francis to the Birds [19]; The Children of Lir [22]; The Birds' Bargain [26]; A Gardener-Sage [27]; Nymphs [29]; Blessings [29]; The Doves [30]; Slow Spring [32]; The Foggy Dew [32]. (200 copies printed; see copy as attached.]

aThe Wild Harp: A Selection from Irish Lyrical Poetry, printed at the Ballantyne Press, London; with decorations by C M Watts (London: Sidgwick & Jackson Ltd. MCMXIII [1913]), ded. ‘To Lady Glenconnor for Traveller’s Joy’; Pref. ix-xv; poems by J. C. Mangan, George Fox, Samuel Ferguson; George Ogle; G. N. Reyonds; J. J. Callanan; Thomas Moore; Douglas Hyde; George Darley; Nora Chesson; Edward Walsh; George Sigerson; T. D’Arcy Magee [sic]; W. B. Yeats; A. G. Geoghegan; Dion Boucicault; Martin MacDermott; A. P. Graves; Stephen L. Gwynn; Dr. Anster; Joseph Campbell; Allingham; “AE“”; Alice Milligan; Moira O’Neill; William Dara [pseud.]; James Stephens; Aubrey de Vere; Eva Gore Booth; Padraic Colum; Emily Lawless; Herbert Trench; Henry de Vere Stacpoole; Dora Sigerson; Seumas O’Sullivan; John Todhunter; Nancy Campbell; Winifred M. Letts; James Joyce [‘I Hear an Army’].

The Cabinet of Irish Literature / Selections from the Works of / the Chief Poets, Orators, and Prose Writers / of Ireland / with biographical sketches and literary notices by / Charles A. Read, FRHS / Author of Tales and stories of Irish life; Stories from the Ancient Classics, &c. / New Edition / revised and greatly Extended by / Katharine Tynan Hinkson [formerly Katharine Tynan], / author of Poems, The Dear Irish Girl, She Walks in Beauty, A Girl of Galway, &c. / Vol. IV / London / The Gresham Publishing Company / 34 Southhampton Street, Strand / 1903 [vols. I-IV, 1902-1903; other imp. 1905, 1906, 1908], ills. [ports.], 8°. [See further details of the earlier edition under Charles Read, supra.]

Memories (London: E. Nash & Grayson 1924), 430pp. - contains chapter sections on Alice Meynell, Lord [Charles] Russell; A. M. Sullivan; Alice Meynell; Barry O’Brien; Edmund Leamy; Ellen O’Leary; Father Russell; Jane Barlow; John O’Leary; John Redmond; Lionel Johnson; Michael Davitt; Dora Sigerson; W. B. Yeats.

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Fiction of Katharine Tynan in Gutenberg Project at 19.10.2018

Mary Gray
An Isle in the Water
Peeps at Many Lands: Ireland

The Story of Bawn
The Great Captain: A Story of the Days of Sir Walter Raleigh
Love of Brothers
www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/author/7598 [accessed 19.10.2018]

See Twenty-one Poems of Katharine Tynan, sel. by W. B. Yeats (1907) - as attached.]


Poems of Katharine Tynan in Poemhunter at 19.10.2018

1. The Legend of St. Austin And The Child
2. The Old Soldier
3. The Promise
4. Starling
5. Palestine: 1917
6. Of St. Francis And The Ass
7. The Little Flock
8. The Little Old Woman
9. To The Others
10. To One In Grief
11. The Truce of God
12. The Vision (Katia: Easter Sunday, 1916)
13. Pilgrims To The East
14. Recompense (For Lord Kilhacken)
15. Salutation
16. Telling The Bees (For Edward Tennant)
17. The Test
18. The Only Son
19. of An Orchard
20. Lenton Communion
21. Farewell
22. They Who Return
23. The Wild Geese
24. The Vision
25. The Young Soldier
26. No Man’s Land
27. Noel
28. Missing
29. The Predestined
30. The Refuge
31. The Riders
32. The Young Mother
33. The Summons
34. The Wall Between
35. The New Recruit
36. Riding Home
37. Nymphs
38. The Bird’s Bargain
39. New Heaven
40. Lambs
41. Old Song Re-Sung
42. Indian Summer
43. Prayer at Night
44. The Lowlands of Flanders
45. The Watchers
46. The Secret Foe
47. Speeding
48. Herbal
49. Mediation
50. Meetings
51. To R A A
52. The Weeping Babe
53. Mater Dei
54. Menace
55. Lament
56. Haymaking
57. The Temple
58. The Refreshment
59. The Trust
60. The Deserted
61. The Aerodrome
62. Emptiness
63. The Widow
64. To Two Bereaved
65. The Boys of The House: For Valentine and Hubert Blake
66. Epiphany (For Dora, 1918)
67. Flower o’ The Year
68. His Footstep
69. Mid The Piteous Heaps of Dead
70. The Open Road
71. Good Friday, A.D. 33
72. The Long Vacation
73. The Last Parting
74. The Perfect Playmate
75. Song of Going
76. The Call
77. The Comrades
78. The Aerodrome
79. The Heroes
80. The Image
81. The Great Sorrow
82. The Bride
83. The Convent Garden
84. The Crown
85. The Dead Coach
86. The Brothers (For Arnold and Donald Fletcher)
87. The Great Chance
88. The Great May
89. The Last Question (For B. A. Bingham)
90. The Colonists
91. The Father
92. The Dream (For My Father)
93. For The Airmen
94. Unhousel’d, Unanointed, Unanel’d
95. High Summer
96. The Choice
97. What She Said
98. The Dear Brown Head
99. The Sad Spring
100. Vigil
101. The Old Love
102. Resurrection
103. Easter
104. The Fields of France
105. Distraction
106. When You Come Home
107. The Gardener
108. Shamrock Song
109. The Vestal
110. The Mother of Three
111. The Great Mercy
112. Slow Spring
113. What Turned the Germans Back
114. The Garden
115. The Heart of a Boy
116. Unfit
117. The Nurse
118. The Golden Boy
119. The Only Child
120. Joining The Colours
121. Turn O’ The Year
122. Wild Geese
123. A Colloquy (For M. W.)
124. Wings In The Night
125. All Souls
126. Immortality
127. A Connaught Man (For Hugh Maguire)
128. Autumnal
129. Comfort
130. Winter Sunset
131. St. Francis And The Birds
132. Christmas in the Year of the War
133. Colours
134. After Ascension
135. Dead- A Prisoner
136. The End of The Day
137. Flower of Youth
138. Adveniat Regnum Tuum
139. A Birth-Night Song
140. A Prayer (For Those Who Shall Return}
141. Any Mother
142. The Broken Soldier
143. The Foggy Dew
144. A Song of Going
145. The Children of Lir
146. A Holy Week Song, 1918
147. A Hero
148. The Doves
149. A Gardener-Sage
150. A Woman Commends Her Little Son
151. A Girl’s Song
152. A Lament
153. Alienation
154. The Wind That Shakes The Barley
155. Sheep And Lambs
156. Quiet Eyes
157. Blessings
158. A Song for the New Year {1915}
159. A Song of Spring
160. Any Woman
Given at Poemhunter > Tynan at www.poemhunter.com/katharine-tynan/poems/ [accessed 19.10.2018]

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Criticism
  • W. B. Yeats, review of Shamrocks, in Irish Fireside (9 July 1889) [rep. in John Frayne, ed., Uncoll. Prose of W. B. Yeats, Vol. 1 (Macmillan 1970), p.119-22]; Ernest Boyd, in Ireland’s Literary Renaissance (Knopf 1916).
  • Russell K. Alspach, ‘The Poetry of Katharine Tynan Hinkson’, in The Ireland America Review, 4 (1940), pp.121-26.
  • Marilyn Gaddis Rose, Katharine Tynan (Lewisburg: Bucknell UP 1974) [var. 1973].
  • Roger McHugh, ed., Letters [of W. B. Yeats] to Katharine Tynan (Dublin: Clonmore & Reynolds; NY: McMullen 1953), 305pp.
  • Ann Connerton Fallon, Katharine Tynan [Irish Writers Ser.] (Boston, MA: Twayne, 1979), qpp.
  • Donna L. Potts, ‘’Irish poetry and the modernist canon: a reappraisal of Katharine Tynan’, in Border Crossings: Irish Women Writers and National Identities, ed. Kathryn Kirkpatrick (Dublin: Wolfhound Press; Alabama UP 2000) Chap. 4].
  • Colette Epplé, ‘“Wild Irish with a vengeance”: definitions of Irishness in Katharine Tynan’s children’s literature’, in Divided Worlds: Studies in Children’s Literature, ed. Mary Shine Thompson & Valerie Coghlan [Irish Society for the Study of Children’s Literature, 3] (Dublin: Four Courts Press 2007) [q.pp.].
See also
  • Elizabeth Coxhead, Daughters of Erin: Five Women of the Irish Renascence (London: Secker & Warburg, 1965); Richard Fallis, The Irish Renaissance: An Introduction to Anglo-Irish Literature (Dublin: Gill & Macmillan 1977); Margaret Ward, ‘The Ladies’ Land League,’ in Irish History Workshop, Vol. 1 (1981), pp.27-35.
See also J. W. Foster, Irish Novels 1890-1940: New Bearings in Culture and Fiction (Oxford: OUP 2008) [see extract].

See Irish Book Lover Vols. 4, 8, 9, 11, 13.

There is an extensive notice on Tynan by Rosemary Raughter in the Online Encyclopedia - online; accessed 29.03.2022.

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Commentary
Lionel Johnson (‘Poetry and Patriotism’, [Address to Irish National Literary Soc. 1892]): ‘I have heard it said that the four volumes of Mrs Hinkson show a steady increase in artistic power, but a noticeable decrease in the true Irish spirit of poetry, an extremely doubtful compliment to the true Irish spirit. ... What the critic meant was that in Mrs Hinkson’s earlier work there were a greater fluency and flow of sentiment, less restraint and careful finish, more obvious rhetoric and impulsiveness. The dainty delicacy of the later work, its mastery of rhythm and curbing of haste, were most upon him, the idea that all art implies discipline and austerity of taste, a constant progress toward an ideal perfection, though his earliest ancestors knew it well, seemed strange to him.’ (Rep. in Mark Story, Poetry and Ireland since 1800, A Source Book (1988), pp.93-106; p.99.

W. B. Yeats (1) “List of 30 best Irish Books” (Dublin Daily Express, 27 Feb. 1895), writes that in her Ballads and Lyrics Mrs Hinkson has given ‘a distinguished expression to much that is most characteristic in Irish Catholicism’ (Letters, ed., Wade, pp.246-51; p.250); that Yeats also referred to her generously in his essay ‘Irish National Literature, III’ (Bookman, Sept. 1895), where he says, ‘No living Irish poet has learned so much from the translators as Mrs Hinkson, and the great change this knowledge has made in her verse is an example of the necessity for Irish writers to study the native tradition’; he continues with an account of her development, and ends with assurance that her best will appear in the forthcoming Miracle Plays [1895], and avers that ‘her best inspiration has ever come from Catholic belief, and to give an excellent expression to the ancient symbols is to be for a delight and a comfort to many ardent and dutiful spirits.’ (John Frayne, ed., Uncollected Prose, Vol. I, 1970, pp.378-79).

Ghosts of London: Yeats wrote to Tynan: ‘This melancholy London - I sometimes imagine that the souls of the lost are compelled to walk through its streets perpetually. One feels them passing life a whiff of air.’ (25 Aug. 1888.)

W. B. Yeats (2), “Autobiography”, in Memoir, ed. Denis Donoghue (London: Macmillan 1972): ‘I wrote many letters to Katharine Tynan, a very plain woman, and one day I overheard somebody say that she was the kind of woman who might make herself very unhappy about a man. I began to wonder if she was in love with me and if it was my duty to marry her. Sometimes when she was in Ireland, I in London would think it possible that I should, but if she came to stay, or I saw her in Ireland, it became impossible again. Yet we were always very great friends and I have no reason to think she every thought of me otherwise.’ (p.32.)

W. B. Yeats (3): Yeats gives an impression of Katharine Tynan’s father in “Knight of the Sheep”, [a story] in The Celtic Twilight (1893) [see also Peter Ure, Yeats, 10963, p.28].

Note: There is an account of a proposal of marriage made by Yeats to Tynan - ‘would it not be a most lovely and suitable thing for two great poets to be united’ - which Tynan shrugs it off with ‘For heaven’s sake, you go to the devil!’, as recounted by her sister. (See R. F Foster, Life of W. B. Yeats, Vol. I, OUP 1997, p.72.)

Ernest A. Boyd, Ireland’s Literary Renaissance (Dublin: Maunsel 1916) - sect. on Katharine Tynan (pp.103-123)

[ Boyd makes the poetry of Katharine Tynan the occasion for an extend reflection of the relation between Catholicism, considered as the majority religion of the Irish people, and the inspiration for the Irish Literary Revival. BS]

[...] She is almost unique in that she is the only writer of any importance whose Catholicism has found literary expression. Reference has previously been made to the famous discussion of Oisin and St. Patrick, the clash of Paganism and Christianity, and to the fact that the Irish poets have almost unanimously declared themselves on the side of the former. It is certainly remarkable how completely the better Catholic writers have effaced their religion from their work. That is not to say they have deliberately suppressed their beliefs, or that the others have openly declared their hostility to the Catholic Church. The fact is simply that one class has been frankly pagan, and, as a rule, mystic, while the other has in no way been inspired or influenced by the teaching to which it assents. It is significant, for example, that so precious an anthology of Catholic folk-poetry as The Religious Songs of [108] Connacht should have been compiled by a Protestant. One would naturally expect that a task of this kind would have appealed to one of the Catholic poets, whose identity of belief and sympathy would specially qualify him to act as an interpreter. But apart from the most minor poets, Katharine Tynan alone reflects that attitude of Catholic Ireland in her verse. Outside of Ireland, Catholicism has been an aesthetic influence. Continental critics have come to regard the Catholic Church as a fosterer of the arts, and many ingenious conclusions have been drawn from the contrast between the artistic imaginativeness of the Latin and Catholic races, and the joyless materialism and ugliness of the Teutonic and Protestant countries. France, especially, has afforded interesting instances of the intimate artistic relations between the Catholic Church and literature. The French Protestant has invariably a certain heaviness, a lack of suppleness and vivacity which distinguish his writing from that of the majority who are untouched by the Lutheran heresy.
 Ireland presents a problem for the champions of neo-Catholicism, for there they will find little to support their enthusiasm for the older Church, as a refuge from the democratic mediocrity, and intolerant freedom, of the most Protestant sections of Protestantism. It is impossible to conceive of a Huysmans or a Verlaine being converted to Irish Catholicism. The “grands convertis” had a conception of religion entirely remote from the philosophy of Catholic Ireland, whose artistically barren soil could never produce a Chartres Cathedral, while its inhabitants would view with horror such a “convert” as the author of La Cathedrale. Irish ecclesiastical architecture is, as a rule, as unrelievedly [109] dull as that which we associate with the extremer forms of Protestantism. [...]

Interesting though she may be as the only important Catholic poet in Ireland, Katharine Tynan will hardly rank with the best writers of the Literary Revival. For the reasons we have seen, Irish Catholicism is necessarily a shallow vein of inspiration, and even at best, it has not created, and cannot create, great poetry. In the special circumstances just described, it has inspired folk-poetry that has many beauties, but the power of The Religious Songs of Connacht loses by transposition. There is more of the poetic essence in Douglas Hyde’s collection than in Katharine Tynan’s many volumes. Nevertheless, she has written more verse than any of her contemporaries, with the possible exception of W. B. Yeats, and this, notwithstanding the incredible list of fiction with which she has endowed the circulating libraries. In Yeats’s case the volume of writing is distributed over a wide range of subject and has been constantly revised. When Katharine Tynan, with a fraction of the poetic material, has spread it over so many pages. It is not surprising her work should be thin. Irish Poems, published in 1913, contains a selection from the best of her more recent poetry. If we are to judge her by this volume, we must forget all the inferior verse, all the book-making, which is doubtless inevitable, so long as commercialism is the master instead of the servant of art. This is all the more easy, as she has here collected a sufficient number of beautiful poems to ensure her remembrance by all who care for the unassuming songs of a poet whose voice has so often sung the fragrance of the country, and the charm of natural beauty.

p.107-8; see longer extract under Boyd - as attached.

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W. P. Ryan, The Irish Literary Revival (1894), Miss Katharine Tynan won speedy fame with poetry which showed a welcome new personality had strayed to Irish fields, though neither the spirit nore the form of the work was Celtic as we have understood it [9]. Further, Katharine Tynan, Mrs. Hinkson, Louise de la Valiere, Shamrocks, and later works; ‘her power is unquestioned, her nature is Irish, but her art and standpoint are sometimes English, strange to say. This is even evident in her Gaelic excursions ... Some of her religious poetry expresses the calm and the fervour of Irish faith. [117]

The Irish Book Lover (1917) —
Lord Edward: A Study in Romance, by Katharine Tynan (Smith, Elder) - notice in The Irish Book Lover,, Vol. VIII, Nos. 9 & 10 (April & May 1917), 112 [“Notice of New Books”].
Readers of Mrs. Hinkson’s autobiographical writings need not be to be told of the love and veneration in which she holds Lord Edward Fitzgerald, the rebel chieftain of ’98, and his descendants, even to the fifth generation. For the materials of this present volume she selected telling passages from family memoirs and biographies. With entire sympathy, exquisite skill and cunning workmanship, she has deftly woven them into a continuous and thrilling narrative, supplying where necessary connecting links. It was a happy thought incited her to do so. For in the telling she brings out all that was best in that most remarkable family, of which “Eddy” was the merriest member. But was it wise to revive the long dead rumour that his step-father Ogilvie acted as his betrayer? Even Sam Neilson, true as steel, was at one time so accused, as well as others, until the researches of Dr. Madden and W. J. Fitzpatrick revealed the real traitor.
Rep. in Bruce Stewart, ed., The Irish Book Lover: An Irish-studies Reader [Princess Grace Irish Library Series] (Gerrards Cross 2004), p.119-20 [sharing a review with Joyce’s Dubliners].

Dominic Daly, The Young Douglas Hyde (1974), writes: Katherine [sic] Tynan lived at fine farmhous at Clondalkin, south of Dublin; m. Henry Hinskon, TCD grad. Yeats writes of her in The Bookman, Sept. 1894, reviewing Cuckoo Songs, her fourth book of verse: ‘No living poet has learned so much from the translators as Mrs Hinkson, and the great change this knowledge has made on her verse is an example of the necessity for Irish writers to study the native tradition of expression. Her first two books, Louis de Valliere [1885] and Shamrocks [1887], contained here and there a moving lyric, but were on the whole merely excellent in promise ... The work of the Irish folklorists, and the translations of Dr Hyde and of an earlier poet, the village schoolmaster Edward Walsh, began to affect her, however, soon afterthe publication of Shamrocks; and the best of Ballads and Lyrics and Cuckoo Songs have the freedom from rhetoric, the simplicity and tenderness, though not the passion, of the Gaelic poets’ [85] (Cont.)

Dominic Daly (The Young Douglas Hyde, 1974) - cont.: In a diary entry of 23 Jan 1887, Hyde notes walking four miles to the Tynan farm - four sisters, a brother and her father - ‘they all have a frightful brogue. Her father is a farmer with three hundred acres.’ On the following day he meets them in College, and shows them around, ‘and all the time I was terribly embarrassed lest anyone should see me talking to them. Katherine was alright but her sister was a sight. I gave them tea, cakes and sweets, etc., and Yeates [sic] came in at the same time.’ Tynan has an account of the visit: ‘there was a day when we had tea with Douglas Hyde in Trinity College. Perhaps Craoibhin Aoibhin ... was at his least inspiring within the walls of his Alma Mater, which was no more motherly to the future lighter of the Gaelic torch in Ireland than she had been to any other of her great sons. I recall the event without any glow of pleasure. It seems to be been a somewhat conventional entertainment, which was not the case with anything in which Douglas Hyde took a hand.’ (Twenty-five Years, London 1913, p.207.)

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Patricia Boylan, All Cultivated People (Gerrards Cross 1988), contains numerous references [10, 14, 15, 57-60, 62, 67, 68, 69, 76, 78, 91, 92, 94, 99, 105, 109, 111, 112, 149, 219, 262, ed. Encyclopaedic Cabinet of Irish Literature [sic], 58; Flower of Youth, 91-92; Five Years Reminiscences, 67, 76; The Years of Shadow, 62, 105; also remarks about her husband]. Her poems, “Flower of Youth”, expeditiously written and published in October; the title poem extraordinarily popular; copies sold to aid Red Cross; a thousand distributed to bereaved mothers in a South of England town, and the Bishop of London used it several times in sermons; to assuage the guilt / grief of mothers who had given their sons to the war was so urgent a duty that the Bishop may not have noticed the peculiar role given to God, ‘Lest Heaven be thronged with greybeards hoary. / God who made boys for His delight / Stoops in a day of grief and glory / And calls them in, in from the night. / When they come trooping from the war / Our skies have many a new young star ... Dear boys! they shall be young forever. / The son of God was once a boy. / They run and leap by a clear river / And of their mirth they have great joy. / God who made boys so clean and good / Smiles with the eyes of fatherhood.’ [91-2]. Further, ‘she refused to risk George Moore when her publishers asked her to revise the four vols. of Encyclopaedic Cabinet of Irish Literature, bringing it up to date with another volume, and then compressing into four. When the publishers insisted ... she chose an excerpt from a play, judging the realistic novels Esther Waters and Sister Teresa ‘unsuitable to the Irish households which would purchase the monumental work’. But she had the courage of her convictions and ... bann[ed] a novelist because of ‘his incivility to Parnell in his last days’ [58].

Katie O’donovan, reviewing Voices on the Wind, Women Poets of the Celtic Twilight (New Island Books 1995), 144pp. in Irish Times [c.10.9.1995), remarks on ‘ground-breaking poems on motherhood’ and evocative descriptions of natural and rural scenes, combining in ‘The Little Hill’, where the beloved landscape is seen as symbol of the maternal breast; also notes ‘All in the April Evening’, and ‘High Summer’, set in idylic natural scene against backdrop of dying men in Flanders; cites also ‘Any Woman’.

John Devitt, reviewing Irish Stories 1893-1800, ed. Peter van de Kamp (Univ. of Leiden Press 1993) [incl. “A Maryr Indeed”; “How Mary Came Home”], in Irish Literary Supplement [Boston] (Spring 1994), remarks that the stories are marred by stylistic garrulity and uncertainty of technique; incls. themes of rural eccentricity, idiocy, madness anticipate Corkery more than Moore; includes venomous studies of female characters; revival of interest unlikely.

Henry Merritt, ‘“Willie Liar”: Yeats, A Novel, Love Poems and Three Women’, in Irish Studies Review (Winter 1994/95), pp.19-23, considers the poet’s ‘persistent deviousness’ in relation to women, focusing on his relations to Katharine Tynan, and especially the meaning of his pseud. “Ganconagh” in John Sherman, meaning ‘one who talks of love’ and plainly addressed to her; Yeat regularly kept her supplied with page proofs of Wanderings of Oisin as it came out.

Rolf & Magda Loeber, A Guide to Irish Fiction, 1650-1900 (Dublin: Four Courts Press 2006) - Introduction [discussing clerical attitudes towards fiction]: ‘[...] When the novelist Katharine Tynan finished her education at the Siena Dominican Convent in Drogheda, she had to sign the convent pledge that she would not dance “fast dances”, go the theatre, or read novels. In her autobiography, she wryly remarks that the pledge did not say anything about the writing of novels.’ (Tynan, Twenty-five Years: Reminiscences, New York, 1913, pp.54-55, 69; Loebers, op. cit., p.lxvi.)

J. W. Foster, Irish Novels 1890-1940: New Bearings in Culture and Fiction (Oxford UP 2008), notes that Tynan calculates precisely the train-and-boat timetable from London to Ireland (‘The Irish Mail leaves London every evening at eight forty-five and covers the distance to Holyhead in some six hours’ - A Cluster of Nuts, Being a Sketch of my Own People, Nisbet 1914, p.219) - and reflects on the author’s ‘author’s class identification with the English passengers [in the train] and her class revulsion, followed by an apparent gender offendedness and then anti-Irishness, when two bilingual Irish (male) seasonal farm-workers returning to Galway from England invade the carriage’ (pp.9-10). Further: ‘We would nowadays be tempted to recognise Tynan’s anti-Irishness as a form of self-dislike [...] However, it is likely that the deeper ensuing emotions are wounded Irish pride and then guilt at her intolerance, followed by an unsuccessful attempt to redeem herself through benign thoughts and actions. They are a surprisingly complex few pages fittingly set in the conveniently compact and telling capsule of the Irish male train and testify, certainly from the Irish side, to the intricacy of Anglo-Irish relations cross-hatched by class, gender, languge, culture, and race.’ (Foster, op. cit., pp.10.) Note: Tynan is extensively considered in Foster’s study, which touches on such titles as The Cabinet of Irish Literature, A Cluster of Nuts, Cousins and Others, Dick Pentreath, The Middle Years, The Wandering Years, and The Years of Shadow but most extensively on A Girl of Galway (at pp.203-13), The Golden Rose (at pp.424-29), An International Marriage (at pp.456-59), A Mad Marriage (at pp.256-28).

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Quotations

Poetry

Apologia”, in Ballads and Lyrics (1891): ‘So in my book there will be found / No gleanings from a foreign ground, / If such you seek, go buy, go buy / Of some more travelled folk than I, / Kind Master Critic, say not, please, / How that her world so narrow is, / Since here she warns expectant eyes / That homely is her merchandise!’ Note that W. B. Yeats emulated the title in ‘Apologia to Ireland in the Coming Times’, printed at the end of “The Rose” section of The Countess Cathleen.

See a selection of the poems of Katharine Tynan - as attached:

“Sheep and Lambs”
“Flower of Youth”
“The Dead Coach”
“All-Souls”
“Turn o’ the Year”
“The Wind that Shakes the Barley”

“Any Woman”
“At Euston Station”
“An Orchard”
“Farwell”
“Sheep and Lambs”

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Any Woman”: ‘I am the pillars of the house; / The keystone of the arch am I. / Take me away, and roof and wall / Would fall to ruin me utterly. // I am the fire upon the hearth, / I am the light of the good sun, / I am the heat that warms the earth, / Which else were colder than a stone. // At me the children warm their hands; / I am their light of love alive. / Without me cold the hearthstone stands, / Nor could the precious children thrive. // I am the twist that holds together / The children in its sacred ring, / Their knot of love, from whose close tether / No lost child goes a-wandering. // I am the house from floor to roof, / I deck the walls, the board I spread; / I spin the curtains, warp and woof, / And shake the down to be their bed. // I am their wall against all danger, / Their door against the wind and snow, / Thou Whom a woman laid in a manger, / Take me not till the children grow!’

The Wind That Shakes the Barley”: ‘There’s music in my heart all day, / I hear it late and early, / It comes from fields are far away, / The wind that shakes the barley. // Above the uplands drenched with dew / The sky hangs soft and pearly, / An emerald world is listening to / The wind that shakes the barley. // Above the bluest mountain crest / The lark is singing rarely, / It rocks the singer into rest, / The wind that shakes the barley. // Oh, still through summers and through springs / It calls me late and early. / Come home, come home, come home, it sings, / The wind that shakes the barley.’

[Note that the song is also attributed to R. D. Joyce [q.v.] - and that, on the evidence of the dates in John Mitchel’s Jail Journal [1854] (Dublin 1861; new edn. 1913), where it is incidentally cited, does actually belong to him.]

The Fields of France”: Jesus Christ they chased away / Comes again another day. / Could they do without Him then / His poor lost unhappy men? / He returns and is revealed / In the trenches and the field. // Where the dead lie thick He goes, / Where the brown earth’s red as a rose, / He who walked the waters wide / Treads the wine-press, purple-dyed, / Stoops, and bids the piteous slain / That they rise with Him again. // To His breast and in his cloak / Bears the younglings of the flock: / Calls His poor sheep to come home / And His sheep rise up and come. / They shall rest by a clear pool / ’Mid the pastures beautiful! // Jesus Christ they chased away / Has come back another day.

The Foggy Dew”: A splendid place is London, with golden store, / For them that have the heart and hope and youth galore;/ But mournful are its streets to me, I tell you true, / For I’m longing sore for Ireland in the foggy dew. // The sun he shines all day here, so fierce and fine, / With never a wisp of mist at all to dim his shine; / The sun he shines all day here from skies of blue:/ He hides his face in Ireland in the foggy dew. // The maids go out to milking in the pastures gray, / The sky is green and golden at dawn of the day;/ And in the deep-drenched meadows the hay lies new,/ And the corn is turning yellow in the foggy dew. // Mavrone ! if I might feel now the dew on my face, / And the wind from the mountains in that remembered place, / I’d give the wealth of London, if mine it were to do, / And I’d travel home to Ireland and the foggy dew.

Palestine 1917”: How strange if it should fall to you, / To me, our boys should do the deed / The great Crusaders failed to do! / To win Christ's Sepulchre: to bleed, / So the immortal dream come true. // What ghosts now throng the Holy Ground, / With rusted armour, dinted sword, / Listening? The earth shakes with the sound; / The wind brings hither a fierce word: / To arms, to arms, Sons of Mahound! // In many a quiet cloister grey / Cross-legged Crusaders, men of stone, / Quiver and stir the Eastward way, / As they would spring up and be gone / To the Great Day, to the Great Day. // Godfrey and Lion-Heart and all / The splendours of the faithful years / Watch our young sons from the Knights' stall, / Ready to clap hands to their spears / If ill befall, if ill befall. // They say: It is the Child's Crusade / Was talked of in our early Spring. / St. George, St. Denis, to their aid! / That was a boy's voice challenging, / Shrill like a bugle, unafraid! // Most wonderful, if your son, my son, / Should win the Holy Thing at last! / The might of Heathenesse be undone, / The strong towers down, the gate unfast, / Lord Christ come to His own, His own. 

Modereen Rue, or The Little Red Rogue

Och, Modereen Rue, you little red rover,
By the glint of the moon you stole out of your cover,
And now there is never an egg to be got,
Nor a handsome fat chicken to put in the pot.
       Och, Modereen Rue!

With your nose to the earth and your ear on the listen,
You slunk through the stubble with frost-drops aglisten,
With my lovely fat drake in your teeth as you went,
That your red roguish children should breakfast content.
       Och, Modereen Rue!

Och, Modereen Rue, hear the horn for a warning,
They are looking for red roguish foxes this morning;
But let them come my way, you little red rogue,
‘Tis I will betray you to huntsman and dog.
        Och, Modereen Rue!

The little red rogue, he’s the colour of bracken,
O’er mountains, o’er valleys, his pace will not slacken,
Tantara! Tantara! he is off now, and, faith!
‘tis a race ‘twixt the little red rogue and his death.
        Och, Modereen Rue!

Och, Modereen Rue, I’ve no cause to be grieving
For the little red rogues with their tricks and their thieving.
The hounds they give tongue, and the quarry’s in sight,
The hens on the roost may sleep easy to-night.
        Och, Modereen Rue!

But my blessing be on him. He made the hounds follow
Through the woods, through the dales, over hill, over hollow,
It was Modereen Rue led them fast, led them far,
From the glint of the morning till eve’s silver star.
         Och, Modereen Rue!

But he saved his red brush for his own future wearing,
He slipped into a drain, and he left the hounds swearing.
Good luck, my fine fellow, and long may you show
Such a clean pair of heels to the hounds as they go.
        Och, Modereen Rue!'
Rep. as [Katherine Tynan-Hickson] in Eleanor Hull, ed., Poembook of the Gael (1913), pp.314-15.
See further titles at Poemhunter.com - as listed under Works - as supra.

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Prose

The Wild Harp: A Selection of Irish Poetry (London 1913), Introduction: ‘The Ireland of my young days was terribly unexacting in the matter of poetry ... Of course there was always Mangan and Ferguson, Callanan and Edward Walsh, and the best of de Vere; but these were dead or old, and Ireland was placidly accepting for poetry what was merely propagandism or heartless exercises in unsimple simplicity. These were the things we young ones were reproducing with great satisfaction up to the time when W. B. Yeats brought a new soul into Irish poetry ... What I would claim or Mr Yeats is that he established, or ateast re-established, the artistic conscience and the artistic ideal in Irish Poetry.’ (p.xiv; quoted in Dominic Daly, The Young Douglas Hyde, 1974, p.131

Peeps at Ireland (1907): ‘I have been pulled up short as many times by the reflection that all I have been saying was contradicted by some other aspect of my country people for we are an eternally contradictory people. The Englishman is simple, the Irish complex. The Anglo-Irish have grafted on to them the complexity of the Irish without their pliability. It makes perhaps the most puzzling of mixtures.’ (Quoted in Ricky LeVert, ‘The Past Really is Another Country’, review of exhibition of the travel-books collection of Ciaran McAnally [at Limerick Univ.], in The Irish Times, 21 Feb. 2011, Weekend, p.6.)

Kit (1917): ‘Oh, how glad I am that they are happy’ she said. ‘It was she he wanted all the time, not me. I knew there was some one. She is so lovely. You must know her one day and love her, Madam.’ [p.352]

W. B. Yeats: ‘Sweeping away the whole poor fabric of the facile and readymade with which the Young Irish versifiers before his day were content, and rebuilding, as she has done, the nation’s poetry. heaven knows what rubbish she has delivered us from! We were all writing like the poets of a country newspaper.’ (Quoted in Frank Tuohy, Yeats, 1976, p.37.)

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References
Justin McCarthy, ed., Irish Literature (Washington: Catholic Univ. of America 1904), gives 12 poems. Portrait by John B. Yeats in the National Gallery of Ireland.

Her poem “Sheep and Lambs” was reprinted in The Oxford Book of Verse, ed. Arthur Quiller-Couch (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1900) [see copy, attached].
The stories “A Martyr Indeed”; “How Mary Came Home” are incl. in Irish Stories 1893-1900, ed. Peter van de Kamp.

Alan Eager, A Guide to Irish Bibliographical Material and Some Sources of Information (London: Library Association 1964) lists Twenty-five Years: Reminiscences (1913); The Middle Years (1916); The Years of Shadow (1919); The Wandering Years (1923), all autobiographical.

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Desmond Clarke, Ireland in Fiction [Pt II] (Cork: Royal Carbery 1985), lists The Love of Brothers (1919); The Man from Australia; Deny the Dreamers; Bitha’s Wonderful Year; The House in the Bogs; They Loved Greatly (1924); The Golden Rose; Kitty at School and College; The River; The Playground; Delia’s Orchard; A Lonely Maid; The Forbidden Way; Connor’s Wood; The House of Dreams (1934).

John Sutherland, The Longman Companion to Victorian Fiction (Longmans 1988; rep. 1989), calls her the 4th dg. of cattletrader with strong nationalist sympathies; sight damaged by measles; background Catholic and strict; first poems, 1878; pre-Raphaelite collection, 1885, subsidised by her father Andrew; first novel, The Way of A Maid (1895); slushy romantic fiction at a rate of 6 per annum; more serious efforts in religious verse; m. Henry Hinkson, barrister, whom she converted to Catholicism; Victorian fiction includes The Handsome Brandons (1899); She Walks in Beauty (1899). BL 94. See also Bio-note in Elaine Showalter, A Literature of their Own (1984).

A. A. Kelly [Hampton], ed., Pillars of the House, Anthology of Verse by Irish Women, 1690 to the Present (Dublin: Wolfhound 1988), takes its title from a poem by Tynan.

Seamus Deane, gen. ed., The Field Day Anthology of Irish Writing (Derry: Field Day 1991), Vol. 2, remarks only at 782 [Dunsany introduces Ledwidge to], & 830 [Yeats associated with ‘the poet Katharine Tynan et al.]. FDA3 selects Twenty-Five Years [416-21]; WORKS & CRIT, 558 [as supra].

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Eilis Ní Dhuibhne, ed., Voices on the Wind: Women Poets of the Celtic Twilight (New Island Books 1995), 144pp., incl. 34 of her poems, along with others by Eva Gore-Booth; Susan Mitchell; Nora Chesson Hopper; Ethna Carbery; Dora Sigerson Shorter.

Maunsel Catalogue (1915), appended as list to pop. edn. of St. John Ervine’s Mrs. Martin’s Man [1914], notices Countrymen All by Katherine [sic] Tynan, short stories of Irish people, ‘delightfully Irish’ (Morning Post),with Souris, by Fay Middleton, new author, dealing with ‘the realities of a friendship which can exist between women, two studies in feminity, one tempestuous and beautiful, the other charming and serene, now life brought peace and happiness to one, through a sea of sorrow, and how a tragic fate pursued the other, although the brightest prospects heralded the opening of her career … [a book] wherein love and passion play their accustomed part.

Collins Catalogue appended to edn. of Ervine’s The Wayward Man notices The Respectable Lady, a charming study of English village life in which ‘The respectable lady [sic] provides a startling surprise for her many admirers and is in many ways one of miss Tynan’s most interesting creations.’

Kennys Books (Cat. 2004) lists The river (London: Literary Press [1929]), 247, [5]pp., and Do., [6th Edn.] Glasgow , Sydney & Auckland: W. Collins Sons 1933), 247pp. [a story of two great loves battling against the prejudices and jealousies of Protestant-Catholic traditions]; A cluster of nuts; being sketches among my own people (London: Lawrence & Bullen 1894), 242pp.; A little book for John O’Mahony’s friends (Portland, Me.: T.B. Mosher 1909), ix, [1], 56pp. [15 cm]. orig. pb.; Denys the dreamer (London: W. Collins Sons & Co. [1920]), vi, 274pp.; Peeps at many lands: Ireland (London: A. and C. Black, 1911), 87pp., 12 leaves of pls.; maps [20 cm.]; The poems of Katherine Tynan / edited with an introduction by Monk Gibbon. Dublin: Figgis 1963), 100pp., 16 cm. [ distrib. in U.S.A. by Dufour]; Flower of youth: poems in war time [3 rd imp.] London: Sidgwick & Jackson 1917), 80pp. [ ‘First impression, June 1915; second impression, Dec. 1915; third impression, Dec., 1917’]; Louise de la Vallière: and other poems [2 nd Edn.] London: K. Paul, Trench, & Co. 1886), xii, 102, 9pp.; Herb o’ grace: poems in war-time (London: Sidgwick & Jackson 1918), 1[,] 20pp.

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Notes
Portrait: A bespectacled portrait in oil by John B. Yeats held in the Municipal Gallery of Ireland is rep. in A. N. Jeffares, W. B. Yeats: Man and Poet (London: Routledge 1949 & Edns.), pls., between pp.182-83, and captioned Katherine [sic] Tynan Hinkson.

Birthdate: the birthdate of Katharine Tynan is recorded in the relevant church records as 23rd Jan. at Irish Genealogy > records > Rathmines 1823-1886 - online; accessed 28.12.2018 [advise of Anne van Weerden].

Kith & Kin: The eldest child of the Hinksons was Godrey (b.1885); the second was Theobald Henry Hinkson (b.1897); and the third Lieutenant Giles Aylmer Hinkson (b.1899) who is listed in the National Archives (1914-1922) - presumably his military record and therefore presumably he survived World War I [WO 339/110212; online.] With the others he lived in North Kensington, Middlesex (London), and later in Buenes Aires (Argentina). A daughter Pamela [Hinkson, q.v.] was born in 1900 and died on 25 May 1982; she lived at Ealing, London; later in Dublin.

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