Author: Magrath, Anne Jane
Biography:
MAGRATH, Anne Jane (b 1816: ancestry.co.uk)
The youngest daughter of James and Hannah (Risk) Magrath, she was baptised at the Roman Catholic Pro Cathedral in Dublin on 18 Feb. 1816. A brother, Charles, died in 1834 and her father died in 1836. The preface to her 1834 book of poems, Blossoms of Genius, refers to her frequent ill-health; the book is dedicated to the Duchess of Kent whose name heads an impressive list of subscribers. In 1839 her dramatized version of William Carleton’s “Fardorougha the Miser; or, the Convicts of Lisnamona” was performed at Calvert’s Theatre, Abbey Street, Dublin; Carleton’s tale had first been published in the Dublin University Magazine in 1837 and Magrath’s unauthorised use of the tale may have prompted its separate publication in 1839. Magrath’s only other book of verse, “The Changed Heart” (1840), has not been traced and is known only by the five stanzas printed in the Dublin University Magazine (1841). In May 1841 Hannah Magrath brought an action for seduction on behalf of Anne Jane’s sister, Charlotte, which was widely reported on in newspapers. The only certain later record of Magrath dates from 1 Mar. 1843 when Saunders’s Newsletter announced a benefit performance of her “Fardorougha” at the Theatre Royal, Abbey Street. Her address is given in the announcement as 43 Marlborough Street. It is possible that she and Charlotte were the “Misses Magrath” who ran a girls’ school in York Street and in Harcourt Street, Dublin, in the 1860s. (ancestry.co.uk 8 Sept 2021; Irish Women Poets of the Romantic Period [2008]; Dublin University Magazine [1841]; Warder and Dublin Weekly Mail 15 May 1841; Saunders’s Newsletter 1 Mar. 1843; Evening Freeman 8 Jan. 1867) SR