Louise Imogen Guiney

Life
1861-1920; American born; issued collections, Songs at the Start (Boston 1884), The White Sail and Other Poems (1887) and Roadside Harp (1893); contrib. to US mags., but also ed. selection of James Clarence Mangan, with a study of the poet (1897), styled ‘excellent’ by D. J. O’Donoghue [PI]; also ed., A Little English Gallery (1894), which includes work by George Farquhar. PI

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Works

Poetry

Songs at the Start (Boston 1884);
The White Sail and Other Poems (1887);
Roadside Harp (1893).

Criticism

Ed. [& intro.]., James Clarence Mangan: His Selected Poems, with a study by the editor (Boston & NY: Lawson Wolffe & Co.; London: John Lane 1897), 342pp. [note: the study is an expanded version of an article in Atlantic Monthly 68 (1891)].
Selected Poems of Katharine Philips, with an “appreciatory note” by L. I. G. [i.e., Louis I. Guiney], [The Orinda Booklets. No. 1] (1903), 48pp., 8°.

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See extracts from her ‘Study of James Clarence Mangan’ (1897) under Mangan > Commentary, infra; also full-text version in RICORSO Library > “Criticism”, via index or attached.

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Commentary
Rudi Holzapel calls Imogen Guiney’s introductory essay, to her edition of James Clarence Mangan: His Selected Poems (1897) ‘brilliant ... but sharply opinionated’; it is quoted at ten-line extent in P. J. Kavanagh, Voices in Ireland (1994), p.293 (as infra). Holzapel remarks that her study is an expanded version of an article in the Atlantic Monthly, 68 (1891).

See also Brian McKenna, Irish Literature (1978), p.261, and Merriam-Websters Biographical Dictionary [biog. article].

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Quotations

Selected Poems—

from The White Sail and Other Poems [1887]
- A Salutation
from A Roadside Harp [1893]:
- Open, Time
- The Lights of London
- In the Reading-Room of the British Museum
- Sunday Chimes in the City

—See “The Poets’ Corner” at The Other Pages - online [accessed 24.09.2010 - copy here attached].

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James Clarence Mangan (1897): ‘It may be unjust to lend him the epitaph of defeat, for he never strove at all. One can think of no other, in the long, disastrous annals of English literature, cursed with so monotonous a misery, so much hopelessness and stagnant grief. He had no public; he was poor, infirm, homeless, loveless ... morbid fancies mastered him as a rider his horse; the demon of opium, then the demon of alcohol, pulled him under, body and soul, despite a persistent and heart-rending struggle, and he perished ignobly in his prime.’ (Quoted in Kavanagh, Voices in Ireland, 1994, p.293.)