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Mary Blachford Tighe: The Irish Psyche
Author(s): Averill Buchanan (Author)
- Publisher: Cambridge Scholars Publishing
- Publication Date: December 8, 2011
- Language: English
- Print length: 255 pages
- ISBN-10: 1443833878
- ISBN-13: 9781443833875
Book Description
The Irish writer, Mary Blachford Tighe (1772–1810), is best known as author of the Spenserian epic Psyche; or, the Legend of Love, first printed privately in 1805. A year after her death, her literary reputation was firmly established when Longmans published Psyche, with Other Poems (1811), a collection that proved so popular that by 1816 it was in its fifth edition. Throughout the nineteenth century Tighe’s popularity endured, but for much of the twentieth, Tighe, like many other women writers of the period, virtually disappeared from public view. Only since the 1970s, when feminist academics worldwide began the project to rehabilitate neglected women writers, has Tighe’s work become accessible once again. As a result, Tighe has been enjoying something of a scholarly renaissance. Yet much of this renewed interest relies heavily on nineteenth-century accounts of Tighe’s life and work, while her other unpublished work – several dozen short poems, as well as her manuscript novel ‘Selena’ – remains neglected. Taking its title from William Hayley’s reference to Tighe as the “Psyche of Ireland”, Mary Blachford Tighe: The Irish Psyche brings together previously overlooked archive material and makes extensive use of important new material to reconstruct Tighe’s life and review the entire corpus of her work in the context in which it was written. By piecing together evidence from family memoirs, correspondence, other contemporary accounts, and crucially, Tighe’s own manuscripts, the writer is restored to her historical and literary context, thereby facilitating new understandings of her work.
Editorial Reviews
Review
“Buchanan's masterly analysis of Mary's family and religious background is revealing of both the woman and the writer and, while this study will have a particular relevance for those interested in her literary output and reputation, it also raises questions about familial relationships, the impact of early Methodism, especially on women, and national identity. In setting Mary Tighe within her historical and literary context, Buchanan offers a more informed and complex assessment than has been possible hitherto, achieves her primary aim of rescuing her subject from the footnotes of literary history and convincingly argues her case as a significant and distinctive presence within Romantic period writing.” - Rosemary Raughter, 'Bulletin of the Methodist Historical Society of Ireland, 18:34 (2013), 170-173
About the Author
Averill Buchanan completed her PhD on Mary Tighe in 2004 at Queen s University Belfast in Northern Ireland. Since then, she has published a number of articles on Tighe and other Irish writers. Averill is a member of the team, based at the University of Nottingham, working on the online edition of The Collected Letters of Robert Southey. She is also a freelance editor, proofreader and indexer.
