Forgotten Writers: Sydney Owenson

Why do we write?

That's one shit tornado of a question, isn't it? To avoid the inevitable Jungian divergence, let me rephrase - why do we want to be published?

Yes, that's more specific, to the point. Writing for publication implies a consciousness that your work will have a readership (as opposed to Kerouac's "pure" writing where he burned his daily pages after he finished them) and perhaps even the hope that your work will survive long after we have shuffled off this mortal coil.

But what about the writers that have been forgotten?

I first discovered Sydney Owenson about six years ago. I had a desk job that wasn't particularly challenging and I spent a great deal of my 8-5 reading public domain novels on the Internet. One site had a wishlist of novels that were awaiting online transcription, and of course the title The Wild Irish Girl caught my eye. It took me forever to find a copy, and this is one of the few of Sydney Owenson's title's still in print. Good novel, not great, but an important snapshot of early nineteenth century, post-Act of Union Ireland. Yet my interest was peaked so I went in search of more.

Easier said than done. I managed to track down her masterpiece O'Donnel buried in a UCLA research library. I had to Xerox the entire novel (a second edition) to get it home for transcription and as I got farther and farther into the novel, loving everyone moment of it, I found myself growing more an more appalled at the idea that it was impossible for someone to just pick this novel up at Borders.

I don't know why Sydney Owenson faded into obscurity while similar authors like Maria Edgeworth and FannyBurney are still widely available. Her portrait hangs in the Dublin's National Gallery and a plaque adorns the wall of an ugly 1970's office facade built at the same location as her infamous salon on Kildare Street, but other than that, even the folks at the Dublin Writers Museum had no idea who I was talking about.

That pissed me off. Not just because she was my pet project and I was leading a crusade (party of one) towards salvaging her memory, but because her writing, while not the most eloquent or moving prose of the early nineteenth century, was a plea for the oppressed peoples of Ireland. At a time when Catholics were barred from owning land and the Irish peasantry were looked upon by their English landlords as little better than livestock, Sydney Owenson educated her primarily British audience on Irish contributions to art and culture, to history and civilization. This was her intent, her purpose in writing, and her extreme popularity among the bon ton of London society ensured her message spread.

*clears throat* And before I get off my high horse about this, just one more tidbit: in 1837 she became the first woman writer to ever receive a literary pension from the British government for her 'services to literature and to patriotism.' The first woman writer ever to received a literary pension from the British government... and she was Irish.

I'd like to do a running series of posts about forgotten authors, so if you have any that are close to your heart, please let me know!