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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., e.g., The Atlantic Monthly, where she published her study of James Clarence Mangan - revised and included in a selection of his poems (1897), which was 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 |
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| Criticism |
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| Miscellaneous |
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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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| Selected Poems— |
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| —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.)
Kathaleen Ny-Houlahan: Note on “Kathaleen Ny-Houlahan” [viz., ‘Kathleen Ni Houlihan’], in Selected Poems of Mangan (London 1897): ‘Kathaleen Ny-Houlanan and all the poems which follow, in this division, except the Dirge for O’Sullivan Beare, are relics of the Jacobite insurrections, chiefly of the immortal ’45. “The King’s son” is, of course, Prince Charles Edward. “The Irish Jacobites claimed the Stuarts as of the Milesian line, fondly deducing them from Fergus.” The popular lyrics of that day, which were written in Ire-land, in the English tongue, have the tang of novelty and wildness, but lack, in many instances, the odd exquisite ten-derness of Shule Aroon and The Blackbird. As in Scotland, some of the sweetest of the Jacobite lyrics date from a generation [346] or more after the event; so nothing written under the Georges, who hated “boets,” [sic] is so good an English poem out of Ireland as its modern successors: Callanan’s spirited Avenger, or The Wild Geese, and a few other lyrics of Katharine Tynan (Mrs. Hinkson). [... &c.]’ (For full text version of this note, see attached.)