Katharine Tynan's importance to English literature is difficult to assess. Her tastes were as varied as her writing was prolific. During her career of more than fifty years, she wrote as many as seven books in one year, and, not surprisingly, not all of her works can be described as masterpieces. Her first book of poetry, Louise de la Vallière and Other Poems (1885), was regarded by many critics as an important work, and, as Anne Connerton Fallon writes, it "was both a financial and social success. It took the reviewers by storm in a way that the modern reader can hardly understand ... she was considered in Ireland the most promising young poet of her generation." Tynan was an important figure in the Irish Renaissance as well as a close friend of W. B. Yeats, who was also involved in the Irish literary revival. It is often...