Morgan (née Owenson), Sydney, Lady

As a young writer, Sydney Owenson quickly learned to defend her works on Irish politics. In Patriotic Sketches of Ireland, for example, Owenson maneuvers her way around traditional gender roles: “Politics can never be a woman’s science, but Patriotism must naturally be a woman’s sentiment” (Owenson 1807, 1.x). Whether you call it politics or patriotism, in almost everything she wrote, Owenson (known as Lady Morgan after her marriage in 1812) used allegory, historical research, and sensibility to advocate for the Irish national cause. Her liberal and nationalist views meant she condemned the Act of Union of 1801 while ardently supporting Catholic Emancipation, a campaign that her Irish novels helped to succeed. A celebrity author from the debut of her first Irish national tale – a genre which she pioneered and popularized – Owenson was as crafty in her writing as she was in her social fashioning. After the publication of her novel The Wild Irish Girl (1806), she charmed her way into many elite English drawing rooms as the cosmopolitan “wild Irish girl,” befriending the likes of Percy Shelley, Lord George Gordon Byron, and several Lord Lieutenants. By the time of her death in 1859, Morgan had published up to 20 books, including novels, travel writing, biographies, memoirs, and national reflections. Prolific and political, she never shied away from her critics, consistently defending the rights of the woman author alongside the rights of her country.