Author: HOLMES, Mary Anne
Biography:
HOLMES, Mary Anne, formerly Emmet (1773-1805: DIB)
The only daughter of four surviving children born to Robert Emmet (1729-1802; state physician in Ireland) and his wife Elizabeth Mason (d 1803), Mary Anne Emmet was born in Dublin on 10 Oct. 1773. Nothing is known about her education but contemporary sources identify her as a fine classical scholar who wrote verse and, like other members of her family, was interested in politics. Her brothers were Christopher Temple (1761-88), a brilliant scholar and barrister; Thomas Addis (1764-1827), physician, barrister, and United Irishman who was imprisoned at Fort George, Scotland, after the 1798 rebellion; and Robert (1778-1803), Irish patriot and revolutionary who was executed for high treason on 20 Sept. 1803. Mary Anne is known to have contributed verse and prose to the Press on behalf of the United Irishmen. She met Robert Holmes (1765-1859), a barrister and radical thinker, and they were married secretly in Sept. 1799. Of their children just one, Elizabeth Emmet Holmes (q.v. as Lenox-Conyngham), survived. Robert Holmes was briefly imprisoned in 1798 and he was arrested again on 29 July 1803 for high treason although he had not taken part in the rebellion organised by his brother-in-law. His wife was sometimes allowed to stay in Kilmainham jail with him. They had a son born after Robert's release in Feb. 1804 but Mary Anne's health was failing rapidly and her physician, William Drennan (q.v.), suspected tuberculosis. She died on 10 Mar. 1805 and was buried beside her parents in the cemetery at St. Peter’s, Aungier Street, Dublin, where Charles Robert Maturin (q.v.) was one of the curates. Her daughter Elizabeth edited and published four of Mary Anne’s poems—“To Hope,” “The Exile to his Country,” “To Friendship,” and “To Oblivion”—in her 1833 collection, The Dream, and Other Poems. A note states that the poems were probably written 1797-1804. Robert Holmes died in London at 37 Eaton Place on 7 Oct. 1859. (DIB 23 Feb. 2025; Thomas Addis Emmet, The Emmet Family [1898]; R. R. Madden, The United Irishmen [1860]; Patrick M. Geoghegan. Robert Emmet: A Life [2002])