Sydney, Lady Morgan

Sydney, Lady Morgan
Portrait by René Théodore Berthon
Born	Sydney Owenson 25 December 1781 (?) Either Dublin, Ireland or the Irish Sea
Died	14 April 1859 (aged about 78) London, United Kingdom
Resting place	Brompton Cemetery
Pen name	Glorvina
Occupation	Novelist, governess
Language	English
Nationality	Irish, British
Ethnicity	Irish
Period	1804–59
Notable works	The Wild Irish Girl (1806)
Spouse	Thomas Charles Morgan (m. 1812)

Sydney, Lady Morgan (née Owenson; 25 December 1781? – 14 April 1859), was an Irish novelist, best known as the author of The Wild Irish Girl.

Sydney Owenson was the daughter of Robert Owenson, alias MacOwen, and Jane Hill. Robert Owenson was an Irish Catholic and a professional actor, noted for his comedic performances. He had been raised in London, and while in England he met and married Jane Hill, the Protestant daughter of a trader from Shrewsbury. In 1776 Owenson and his wife returned to Ireland for good. The couple settled in Dublin and Owenson earned a living by performing in theatres around Dublin, Drumcondrath, and Sligo. Around 1778 the couple gave birth to Sydney, who was named after her paternal grandmother. The exact date of Sydney's birth remains unknown; one of Sydney's idiosyncrasies was that she was prone to be elusive about her actual age. Later in life she would claim that she was born on 25 December 1785, a lie she maintained to such an extent that even on her death certificate there is no certainty about her age, stating that she was "about 80 years".

Sydney spent the earliest years of her childhood at the Owensons' home at 60 Dame Street in Dublin with her mother Jane and sister Olivia. Sydney was primarily educated by her mother, but she also received tutoring from a young boy named Thomas Dermody, a local prodigy whom their father had rescued from poverty. Her mother died in 1789, when Sydney was about ten years old, and her father sent her and her sister away to private schools to finish their education. Sydney spent three years at a Huguenot academy at Clontarf and then attended a finishing school in Earl Street, Dublin. After completing school Sydney moved with her father to Sligo.

In 1798 the Owenson family was experiencing some financial hardships and Sydney was forced to leave home in search of employment. She was hired as a governess by the Featherstones of Bracklyn Castle, County Westmeath. In this environment she blossomed into an avid reader, a capable conversationalist, and an unabashed performer of songs and dances. It was at this period in her life that she began her writing career.

She was one of the most vivid and hotly discussed literary figures of her generation. She began her career with a precocious volume of poems. She collected Irish tunes, for which she composed the words, thus setting a fashion adopted with signal success by Thomas Moore. Her novel St. Clair (1804), about ill-judged marriage, ill-starred love and impassioned nature worship, in which the influence of Johann Wolfgang von Goethe (specifically his novel The Sorrows of Young Werther) and Jean-Jacques Rousseau was apparent, at once attracted attention. Another novel, The Novice of St. Dominick (1806), was also praised for its qualities of imagination and description.

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