The post-Famine generation of Irish women in Boston and New England were typically relegated to jobs as domestic servants, nursemaids and mill workers, before eventually being accepted as shop clerks, nurses and teachers. This work was often in addition to their primary role running households as wives and mothers.
The young Irish girls of the Famine generation who benefited the most were the ones who took advantage of education and learning in both public and parochial schools, giving them an unparalleled opportunity to distinguish themselves as individuals, artists and professionals.
By the 1870s, a new generation of Irish and Irish-American women were establishing themselves as poets, children's book authors, novelists, essayists and travel writers. These women took up writing as a way of earning a living but also as a creative response to their own lives and the lives of their families.
Here is a sketch of nine Irish women writers who became accomplished writers in their lifetimes. Three of them emigrated to Massachusetts as children, while the other six were born in the United States to immigrant parents.
All of these writers share a common mentor and champion, the renowned Boston Irish writer John Boyle O’Reilly. In his role as writer, editor and later publisher of The Boston Pilot weekly newspaper between 1870 and 1890, the distinguished poet, essayist and orator provided a platform through the newspaper for numerous women to publish their early writing, gain confidence as writers and become published in the country's most esteemed publishing houses.
Mary McGrath Blake
(1840-1907)
Born in Dungarvin, Waterford, Mary McGrath’s family emigrated to Quincy, MA in 1849, where she studied music and languages at Quincy High School and Elmhurst Academy at Sacred Heart. In her teens she published poetry in several Boston newspapers, leading to two published volumes of poetry,
Verses along the Way and
In the Harbour of Hope and children’s books,
The Merry Months All and
Youth in Twelve Centuries. An inveterate traveler, Mary wrote three travel books,
On the Wing; Mexico: Picturesque, Political, Progressive; and
A Summer Holiday in Europe.
Fanny Parnell
(1848-1882)
Known as the Patriot Poet, Fanny Parnell was born in Avondale, Wicklow to a famous Irish family with strong Boston connections, including her grandfather Admiral Charles Stewart, commander of the USS Constitution and her brother, Home Rule leader Charles Stewart Parnell. As American spokeswoman for the Ladies Land League movement in Ireland, Fanny’s 1880 book,
The Hovels of Ireland, portrayed the Irish plight since the famine. She published her poetry in the
Boston Pilot in Boston, which issued a collection of her work entitled
Land League Songs when she died at age 34.
Katharine O’Keeffe O’Mahoney
(1852-1918)
Katharine moved with her family from County Kilkenny to Massachusetts when she was 10 years old, living in Methuen before settling in Lawrence. She taught at Lawrence High School, where one of her students was poet Robert Frost. Later she made her living lecturing and writing books, among them
Famous Irish Women, a history of Irish women from Pagan Ireland to Ireland’s Literary Revival and
An Evening with Longfellow. She was president of Ancient Order of Hibernians and St. Clare League of Catholic Women, a group that helped orphans.
Katharine E. Conway
(1853 – 1927)
Born in Rochester, NY to Irish parents, Conway was a noted poet and journalist working in Western New York. She became co-editor of the
Boston Pilot under John Boyle O’Reilly and then became the first woman editor of the paper in 1904. She wrote numerous books including
On the Sunrise Slope
, Bettering Ourselves and
In the Footprints of the Good Shepherd. She was an officer in the New England Women’s Press Association, and a Professor of Journalism at Notre Dame University, which also awarded her the prestigious Laetare Medal.
Catherine Crowley
(1856 – 1920)
Born in East Boston to an Irish Catholic family, Catherine was encouraged to write children’s literature by John Boyle O’Reilly, and published several books including
Merry Hearts and True, Happy Go Lucky and
Everyday Girl. She then turned to adult fiction, writing a trilogy of romance novels that gained her national praise, T
he Heroine of the Strait: A Romance of Detroit in the Time of Pontiac; Love Thrives in War: a Romance of the Frontier in 1812; and
In treaty with Honor: a Romance of Old Quebec.
Louise Imogen Guiney
(1861-1920)
Louise Guiney was born in Roxbury, the daughter of an Irish immigrant, General Patrick Guiney, a war hero in the American Civil War. As a child she and her mother traveled to Virginia, where Patrick’s Irish Ninth Regiment was stationed. She began publishing poems in the Boston Pilot under the initials P.O.L. with references to Latin, Greek and Medieval poetry, and readers assumed she was ‘a bright Harvard boy.’ She published a number of books, including
Songs at the Start, Goose-Quill Papers and The White Sail. Her final work was entitled
Happy Endings.
Mary Louise ‘Minnie’ Gilmore
(1862-1932)
Born in Boston, Minnie Gilmore was the daughter of famous bandleader Patrick S. Gilmore of Galway and his wife Ellen J. O’Neill of Lowell. As a teenager, Minnie’s poetry appeared in numerous Boston newspapers, and eventually she published two volumes of poetry,
Pipes from Prairie Land and Other Places and
Songs from the Wings. Having traveled the country with her parents, she work showed great appreciation for the American West especially. She also published two highly acclaimed novels, A
Son of Esau and
The Woman Who Stood Between Them.
Mary 'Molly' Boyle O’Reilly
(1873-1939)
Born in Charlestown to John Boyle O’Reilly and Mary Murphy O’Reilly, Mary was a fearless activist journalist who helped uncover child and women labor abuses in New England. As a war correspondent in World War I, she wrote syndicated dispatches from England, France and Russia for the Newspaper Enterprise Associates of America. Her novel
The Black Fan was described as “a vivid slant on World War I and the causes leading up to it.” She wrote essays and lectured extensively on Ireland, Catholicism and on her beloved father, John Boyle O’Reilly.
Elizabeth 'Bessie' Boyle O’Reilly
(1874-1922)
Elizabeth ‘Bessie’ Boyle O’Reilly (1874-1922) was one of the most distinctive travel writers of the early 20thcentury. Born in Charlestown to celebrated Irish poet, John Boyle O'Reilly and writer Mary Murphy O'Reilly, Bessie published a collection of poems,
My Candle and Other Poems, then moved to Europe for a decade, researching two books that would become classics in travel literature,
Heroic Spain and H
ow France Built Her Cathedrals: A Study in the Twelfth and Thirteenth Centuries, published the year before she died. She was the younger sister of Mary Boyle O’Reilly.
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