Irish Boston History & Heritage

Boston's Louise Imogen Guiney was a leading Catholic poet and essayist of her day, publishing several volumes of poetry a book on Irish hero Robert Emmet.   Born in Roxbury in 1861, Louise was the only daughter of Irish immigrants. Her father, General Patrick Guiney of the Massachusetts Irish Ninth Regiment, was a war hero in the American Civil War. As a child, Louise traveled with her mother to Virginia, where her father was stationed.  In 1881, at age 20, Guiney began publishing poems in the  Boston Pilot . Initially she published under the initials P.O.L. with references to Latin, Greek and Medieval poetry, and readers assumed she was ‘a bright Harvard boy.’ By year's end she was publishing under her full name.  She published a number of books, including  Songs at the Start  (1883),  Goose-Quill Papers  and  The White Sail . Her final work was entitled  Happy Endings .  In 1894, Guiney and her mother moved just outside Boston to "a pretty cottage in Aburndale, shaded by