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Life
| ?1870-1953 [var. 1871;] b. 3 Feb., Cloona, a country house nr. Dunmurry, Co. Antrim; dg. of Nicholas Grimshaw, dir. of Ulster Spinning Co. turned wine and oil merchant, and Eleanor [mée Newsam], from Cork; ed. Margaret Byers’ Ladies Collegiate College, Belfast, and in Pension Rétaillaid, in Caen, Normandy; contined at Victoria College, Belfast; Bedford College, London, and QUB [as QCB], Belfast; worked as sports journalist in Dublin, 1891-99, converting to Catholicism at 23; became a record-breaking woman cyclist and sub-edited Irish Cyclist; sheshe moved to London in her 20s to work as journalist; ed. Social Review; 1895-99; wrote press coverage for the Cunard Line in exchange for passage to exotic places; |
| travelled to Tahiti, 1906; ran a coffee plantation in Papua, New Guinea; she was first white woman to travel up Sepik and Fly rivers; settled in Australia; and commissioned by the Australian Govt. to publicise the development of the country; contrib. to Wide World Magazine and National Geographical; issued 42 books incl. thirty novels, some short fiction and numerous travelogues, all based on her South Seas experiences. DIB DIW ATT DUB OCIL RIA/DIB |
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Works
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Also commonly noticed: In the Strange South Seas (1907); When the Red Gods Call (1910); Guinea Gold (1912); The Beach of Terror (1931); South Sea Sarah (1940); Note: all abridged edns. presumed 2nd edns. or later. |
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Criticism
Clare McCotter, ‘An Elizabeth of the Pacific: The Monarch in Motion in Beatrice Grimshaw’s Travel Writing’, in The Irish Review, 39, 1 (Winter 2008), pp.161-74; also A. A. Kelly, a paper presented to IASAIL (TCD July 1992; See Conference papers, ed. T. Brown. ]
Note: The lively article on Grimshaw by Ivy Bannister in the Dictionary of Irish Biography (RIA/Cambridge 20049) strikes mordant notes about her extraordinary career - e.g.: ‘In 1936, she retired with her brother Ramsay to Bathurst, Australia, outliving both him and her popularity. Her achievements were catalogued in obituaries in The Times, the New York Times, and other prominent journals. Unfortunately, the bulk of her personal papers have disappeared. / Grimshaw's two Irish novels, together with her Irish journalism, have been forgotten: polished work, which captures the changing lives of women in fin-de-siècle Ireland.’ (Available online.).
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References
Stephen Brown, Ireland in Fiction (Dublin: Maunsel 1919), lists When the Red Gods Call (Mills & Boon 1910) [in which the hero is Hugh Lynch, a Clareman]; Guinea Gold (Mills & Boon 1912) [with character Geo. Scott, A Belfastman],, both set in Guinea; IF lists as first novel Broken Away [sic] (Lane 1897) [set in Dublin and Belfast, in which a written-out novelist Alfred Moore attempts to murder and steal the manuscript of Stuart Rivington; Dublin literary milieu].
Ann Owens Weekes, ed., Unveiling Treasures: The Attic Guide to the Published Works of Irish Women Literary Writers: Drama, Fiction, Poetry (Dublin: Attic Press 1993), Biog. [as in Life, supra] and Bibl. [as in Works, supra.]
Brian Cleeve & Ann Brady, A Dictionary of Irish Writers (Dublin: Lilliput 1985) calls her the ‘first white woman to penetrate Borneo’ [cf. ATT, ‘white woman’ also]; but DUB reports that there is a misleading claim to this effect, based on her Who’s Who entry where she said she had often met natives who had never seen a white person – that is easy in Papua’.
[Note: bio-date vars. ?1880 - DIW; 1880 - DIB; 1871 - ATT; 1870 - DUB.]
Bernard Share, ed. Far Green Fields, 1500 Years of Irish Travel Writing (Belfast: Blackstaff 1992), excerpts from From Fiji to the Cannibal Islands (Nelson 1917) [err. for 2nd ed.]; Katie Donovan, A Norman Jeffares, and Brendan Kennelly, eds., Ireland’s Women, Writings Past and Present (G&M 1994), selects From Fiji to the Cannibal Islands [pp.301-04]. SEE also account of her in A. A. Kelly, ed., Wandering Women: Two Centuries of Travel out of Ireland (Dublin: Wolfhound 1995).
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Notes
Kith & Kin?: Richard Ryan (Biographia Hibernica: Irish Worthies, 1821) lists ‘Nicholas Grimshaw’ (Vol. II, p.288). Note also that there is a character ‘Sylvie Grimshaw’ in Forrest Reid’s novel, The Genlte Lover: A Comedy of Middle Age (1912).
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