SOURCE: "Sydney Owenson, Lady Morgan: Irish Patriot and First Professional Woman Writer," Eire-Ireland, Vol.XV, No. 2, Summer 1980, pp. 60-90.

In the following essay, Colin B. Atkinson and Jo Atkinson review the Irish novels written by Sydney Owenson, Lady Morgan, and demonstrate how Morgan's work was typical of that of the new and growing body of professional women writers. At the same time, the critics point out that Morgan, unlike her contemporaries, combined in her novels feminist and Irish patriotic themes, while establishing both personal and social success.

A Biographer wrote of Julia Kavanagh (1824-1877), an Anglo-Irish author, that "in her twentieth year she returned to London, and adopted literature as a profession."¹ A great distance separates Julia Kavanagh from Aphra Behn (1640?-1689), the first Englishwoman to wrest a living from writing. How much society and women and literature had to change before a woman could simply choose to...