Louise Imogen Guiney (January 7, 1861''The Catholic Encyclopedia and Its Makers'', 1917, p. 70
/ref> – November 2, 1920) was an American

poet A poet is a person who studies and creates poetry. Poets may describe themselves as such or be described as such by others. A poet may simply be the creator (thought, thinker, songwriter, writer, or author) who creates (composes) poems (oral t ...

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ist and

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, born in

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Biography

The daughter of Gen. Patrick R. Guiney, an Irish-born

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officer and lawyer,''The American Magazine'', Vol 8 (1888) from

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and Jeannette Margaret Doyle, she was raised

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and educated at the Notre Dame convent school in Boston and at the Academy of the Sacred Heart in

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, from which she graduated in 1879. Over the next 20 years, she worked at various jobs, including serving as a postmistress and working in the field of cataloging at the

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. She was a member of several literary and social clubs, and according to her friend

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was "the most vital and creative personal influence" on their circle of writers and artists in Boston (see

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In 1901, Guiney moved to

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, England, to focus on her poetry and essay writing. She donated a crucifix sculpture to the church of St Mary and St Nicholas,

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, to mark the centenary of

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's birth in 1901. She soon began to suffer from illness and was no longer able to write poetry. She was a contributor to ''

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'', ''

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'', ''

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'', ''

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'', '' Dublin Review'', '' The Catholic World'', and the ''Catholic Encyclopedia''. Guiney is believed to have had a long-term relationship with Alice Brown who wrote of their travels together in her book ''By Oak and Thorn'' (1897) and later wrote the biography ''Louise Imogen Guiney — a Study'' (1921). With Gwenllian Morgan, Guiney prepared materials for an edition and biography of the seventeenth-century Anglo-Welsh Metaphysical poet

Henry Vaughan Henry Vaughan (17 April 1621 – 23 April 1695) was a Welsh metaphysical poet, author and translator writing in English, and a medical physician. His religious poetry appeared in ''Silex Scintillans'' in 1650, with a second part in 1655.''Oxfo ...

. Neither Guiney nor Morgan lived to complete the project, however, but their research was used by F. E. Hutchinson for his 1947 biography ''Henry Vaughan''.

Death and legacy

Guiney died of a stroke near

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, England, at age 59, leaving much of her work unfinished. Her life and works caught the attention of the historian and writer Eva Tenison who unusually published books about her under her own name. In the year after she died Tenison published, ''Louise Imogen Guiney; an Appreciation''. In 1923 she published ''Louise Imogen Guiney: Her Life and Works, 1861-1920'' and ''A Bibliography of Louise Imogen Guiney, 1861-1920''. Tenison also published, ''The Recusant Poets: An Unpublished Work of Louise Imogen Guiney and Fr. Geoffrey Bliss, S.J.'' Reprinted from "The Irish Monthly". In 1926, Guiney's sister Grace published a posthumous letter collection.

Bibliography

*Songs at the Start (1884, poetry) *Goose-Quill Papers (1885, essays) *The White Sail and Other Poems (1887, poetry) *Brownies and Bogles (1888, poetry) *Monsieur Henri: A Foot-Note to French History (1892, essays) *A Roadside Harp (1893, poetry) *A Little English Gallery (1895, essays) *Robert Louis Stevenson (1895, biography, with Alice Brown) *Lovers' Saint Ruth's and Three Other Tales (1895, short stories) *Nine Sonnets Written at Oxford (1895, poetry) *Patrins (1897, essays) *James Clarence Mangan, his Selected Poems: With a Study by the Editor (1897, editor) *England and Yesterday (1898, poetry) *The Martyrs' Idyl and Shorter Poems (1899, poetry) *Robert Emmet (1904) *Hurrell Froude. Memoranda and Comments (1904) *The Princess of the Tower (1906, poetry) *Blessed Edmund Campion (1908) *Happy Ending (1909, poetry, her collected verse) *Letters (1926, letters) (posthumously)
Recusant Poets
(1939, ed., with Geoffrey Bliss) (posthumously)

References

Sources

*Fairbanks, Henry G., ''Louise Imogen Guiney'', New York: Twayne Publishers Inc., 1975. . *Reichardt, Mary R. (ed.), ''Catholic Women Writers: A Bio-bibliographical Sourcebook,'' Portsmouth, NH: Greenwood Publishing Group, Inc., 2001. . *Tenison, E.M., ''Louise Imogen Guiney,: Her Life And Works, 1861-1920'', London: Macmillan, London, 1923. ASIN: B000859GVG 1923. * *

External links

* * *
Essays by Louise Imogen Guiney at Quotidiana.org

* Louise Imogen Guiney Collection: Late nineteenth-century works by this American poet and essayist, (95 titles). From th
Rare Book and Special Collections Division at the Library of Congress

Poems by Louise Imogen Guiney
{{DEFAULTSORT:Guiney, Louise Imogen 1861 births 1920 deaths American essayists American poets of Irish descent American Catholic poets American women essayists American women poets Catholics from Massachusetts Contributors to the Catholic Encyclopedia Poets from Boston