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130 NOTICES OF BOOKS.
Note: This text has been automatically extracted via Optical Character Recognition (OCR) software. The text has not been manually corrected and should not be relied on to be an accurate representation of the item.
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Note: This text has been automatically extracted via Optical Character Recognition (OCR) software. The text has not been manually corrected and should not be relied on to be an accurate representation of the item.
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. R . «B»» Passages Bentley From , New M...
she married Sir Charles Morgan , a physician , and author of a work entitled " Sketches of the Philosophy of Life and Morals , " which
appears by her diary to have led to no small controversy in the religious world . During the next five years of her life , spent partly
abroad and partly in Dublin , Lady Morgan published two novels , _"O'Donnell" and " Florence Macarthy , " and a work on France which
, enjoyed unbounded success and notoriety . A similar record of Italy received the testimony of Lord Byron to its truth . It is to this
period of her life that the volume of diary and correspondence now published refers . In 1827 appeared " The O'Briens and O' Flaherties , "
succeeded by " The Book of the Boudoir , " " The Princess , " " Dramatic Scenes from Real Life , " " The Life and Times of Salvator
Rosa , " and lastly , in 1840 , " Woman and her Master , " in which she is said " to have carefully investigated one of the most
important branches of social science—the position which women should occupy in the order and progress of society . She has soug'ht
in the records of the past the guidance for the future . She has subjected the pages of history to a rigorous moral analysis , testing
their facts with the skill of a critic , and deducing results with the wisdom of a philosopher . " "It is greatly to be regretted , " pursues
the same critic , " that this work , which is , in fact , a philosophical history of woman down to the fall of the Roman empire , should not
have been extended ; but a weakness of sight obliged this indefatigable lady to relinquish her literary labors , although not
before she had produced , in conjunction with her husband , two volumes of sketches , entitled ' The Book without a Name . ' "
It will be seen from this short account , how many and how various were the works produced by Lady Morgan , many of them bearing
strongly on political and social subjects , at a time when party violence rose to a height which we can hardly realise at the present day .
In the first quarter of this century , when poachers , radicals , and sheepstealers ran an almost equal chance of finding themselves in
hanging category ; when the strong waves of 1798 had hardly subsided in Ireland , and English editors were imprisoned for seditious
language , —it argued no small courage in a woman to brave the influential Tory majority , and write boldly in defence of those liberal
principles which have since gained the day . As might be expected she was subjected to violent attacks from the Tory press , and many
allusions are made in the present volume to an article in the Quarterly Review upon her " France . " But in later times and
during the ministry of Lord Grey , a pension of three hundred pounds from the Civil List was conferred upon Lady Morgan , in
acknowledgment of the services rendered by her to the world of letters ; and also , it may be hoped , of those rendered to the liberal cause .
The single volume now published after so long an interval , refers to the years 1818 and 1819 , when Lady Morgan lived in the very
centre of " the world . " She says in her preface : —
'' My original intention was to publish an autobiography from my starting
130 Notices Of Books.
130 NOTICES OF BOOKS .
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Citation
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English Woman’s Journal (1858-1864), April 1, 1859, page 130, in the Nineteenth-Century Serials Edition (2008; 2018) ncse.ac.uk/periodicals/ewj/issues/ewj_01041859/page/58/
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