Frances Browne
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Frances Browne | |
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Born | Stranorlar, County Donegal, Ireland |
16 January 1816
Died | Script error: The function "death_date_and_age" does not exist. Richmond upon Thames |
Frances Browne (16 January 1816 – 21 August 1879) was an Irish poet and novelist, best remembered for her collection of short stories for children: Granny's Wonderful Chair.
Contents
Early life
She was born at Stranorlar, in County Donegal, Ireland, the seventh child in a family of twelve children. She was blind from infancy as a consequence of an attack of smallpox when she was only 18 months old. In her writings, she recounts how she learned by heart the lessons which her brothers and sisters said aloud every evening, and how she bribed them to read to her by doing their chores. She then worked hard at memorising all that she had heard. She wrote her first poem, a version of "The Lord's Prayer", when she was seven years of age.[1]
First publications
In 1841, her first poems were published in the Irish Penny Journal and in the London Athenauem. One of those included in the Irish Penny Journal was the beautiful lyric, "Songs of Our Land" which can be found in many anthologies of Irish patriotic verse.[2] She published a complete volume of poems in 1844, and a second volume in 1847. The provincial newspapers, especially the Belfast-based Northern Whig reprinted many of her poems and she became widely known as 'The Blind Poetess of Ulster'. In 1845 she made her first contribution to the popular magazine Chambers's Journal and she wrote for this journal for the next 25 years. The first short story that she had published in the Journal was entitled, "The Lost New Year's Gift". It appeared in March 1845 and tells the tragic tale of a poor dressmaker in London. It displays Frances Browne's fine abilities as a storyteller.[1] She also contributed many short stories to magazines that had a largely female readership. For example, in the 1850s she made a number of contributions to the "Ladies' Companion", a magazine read by many well-to-do women of the Victorian era. Stories contributed to this magazine included the very amusing "Mrs Sloper's Swan" and an eerie tale set in Co.Fermanagh called "The Botheration of Ballymore."
Emigration to Edinburgh
In 1847, she left Donegal for Edinburgh with one of her sisters as her reader and amanuensis. She quickly established herself in literary circles, and wrote essays, reviews, stories, and poems, in spite of health problems. In 1852, she moved to London, where she wrote her first novel, My Share of the World (1861). Her most famous work, Granny's Wonderful Chair, was published in 1856 and it is still in print to this day. It is a richly imaginative book of fairy stories and has been translated into many languages. It was also in 1856 that her third volume of poetry appeared – Pictures and Songs of Home. It is a slim volume of poems directed at very young children and contains beautiful illustrations. As the title suggests the poems focus on her childhood experiences in County Donegal and they are very evocative of the Donegal countryside.[1]
London and later life
After her move to London she wrote for the Religious Tract Society making many contributions to their periodicals The Leisure Hour and The Sunday at Home. One of these was "1776: a tale of the American War of Independence" which was printed in The Leisure Hour on the centenary of that event in 1876. As well as describing some of the revolutionary events it is also a touching love story and is beautifully illustrated.[1] Her last piece of writing was a poem called "The Children's Day" which appeared in "The Sunday at Home" in 1879.
She died on 21 August 1879, at 19 St John's Grove in Richmond-upon-Thames, and was buried in Richmond Cemetery on 25 August 1879.
Further reading
The most detailed biography available is The Life and Works of Frances Browne by Patrick Bonar published in 2007. There is also an analysis of some of her short stories in an article in the Donegal Annual for 2008 – "Frances Browne and the Legends of Ulster" by Raymond Blair. Raymond Blair has also edited an anthology of her poems, short stories and essays entitled "The Best of Frances Browne." There is an excellent treatment of her literary career by Paul Marchbanks in An A-to-Z of Irish Women Writers edited by A G Gonzalez (2006). Finally a brief entry about the poet can be found in the magisterial Dictionary of Irish Biography recently published under the auspices of the Royal Irish Academy.[3] Therefore, it would appear that the fame of the undeservedly forgotten blind poet is being gradually restored.
References
External links
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Wikisource has original works written by or about: Frances Browne |
- Works by Frances Browne at Project Gutenberg
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- Works by Frances Browne at LibriVox (public domain audiobooks)
- Granny's Wonderful Chair and Its Tales of Fairy Times, by Frances Browne, introduced and illustrated by Katharine Pyle. New York: E. P. Dutton & Co., 1916.
- Granny's Wonderful Chair, by Frances Browne, illustrated by Florence White Williams. New York: The Saalfield Publishing Company, 1928; Illustration copyright not renewed.
- Bibliography of Frances Browne's works
- Frances Browne at Library of Congress Authorities, with 13 catalogue records
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- EngvarB from October 2013
- Use dmy dates from October 2013
- Pages with broken file links
- Articles with Internet Archive links
- 1816 births
- 1887 deaths
- Blind people from Ireland
- Irish short story writers
- Irish women poets
- People from Stranorlar
- Irish women novelists
- Women short story writers
- 19th-century Irish people
- 19th-century Irish poets
- 19th-century Irish novelists
- 19th-century women writers
- Burials at Richmond Cemetery
- 19th-century short story writers