53 19th century Irish writers

Cecil Frances Alexander was an Anglo-Irish hymnwriter and poet. Amongst other works, she wrote "All Things Bright and Beautiful", "There Is a Green Hill Far Away" and the Christmas carol "Once in Royal David's City."

Jane Barlow was an Irish writer, noted for her novels and poems describing the lives of the Irish peasantry, chiefly about Lisconnel and Ballyhoy, in relation to both landlords and the Great Famine.

Marguerite Gardiner, Countess of Blessington, was an Irish novelist, journalist, and literary hostess. She became acquainted with Lord Byron in Genoa and wrote a book about her conversations with him.

Gertrude Elizabeth, Lady Colin Campbell was an Irish-born journalist, author, playwright, and editor. She was married to Lord Colin Campbell, a brother-in-law of Princess Louise, Queen Victoria's fourth daughter.

Mariella Norma Borthwick was a British artist and writer and an Irish language activist.

Patrick Brontë was an Irish Anglican priest and author who spent most of his adult life in England. He was the father of the writers Charlotte, Emily, and Anne Brontë, and of Branwell Brontë, his only son. Patrick outlived his wife, the former Maria Branwell, by forty years, by which time all of their children had died as well.

Frances Browne was an Irish poet and novelist, best remembered for her collection of short stories for children, Granny's Wonderful Chair.

Margaret Byers was an Irish educator, activist, social reformer, missionary, and writer. She was the founder of Victoria College, Belfast. Byers was involved in philanthropic work, with especial reference to the training of the young. She wrote many papers on different phases of the progress of girls' education in Ireland, on Irish industrial schools, and on temperance.

Agnes Mary Clerke was an Irish astronomer and writer, mainly in the field of astronomy. She was born in Skibbereen, County Cork, Ireland, and died in London.

Louisa Stuart Costello was an Anglo-Irish writer on travel and French history, said to have been born either in Ireland or Sussex.

Isabella Valancy Crawford was an Irish-born Canadian writer and poet. She was one of the first Canadians to make a living as a freelance writer.

Margaret Anna Cusack, also known as Sister Mary Francis Cusack and Mother Margaret, was first an Irish Anglican nun, then a Roman Catholic nun, then a religious sister and the founder of the Sisters of St. Joseph of Peace, and then an Anglican. By 1870 more than 200,000 copies of her works which ranged from biographies of saints to pamphlets on social issues had circulated throughout the world, the proceeds from which went towards victims of the Famine of 1879 and helping to feed the poor.

William Ulick O'Connor Cuffe, 4th Earl of Desart. He succeeded to the title of 6th Baron Desart, 4th Viscount Desart and 4th Earl of Desart on 1 April 1865

Maria Edgeworth was a prolific Anglo-Irish writer of adults' and children's literature. She was one of the first realist writers in children's literature and was a significant figure in the evolution of the novel in Europe. She held views on estate management, politics and education, and corresponded with some of the leading literary and economic writers, including Sir Walter Scott and David Ricardo.

Ellen Fitzsimon was an Irish poet.

Isabella Augusta, Lady Gregory was an Irish dramatist, folklorist and theatre manager. With William Butler Yeats and Edward Martyn, she co-founded the Irish Literary Theatre and the Abbey Theatre, and wrote numerous short works for both companies. Lady Gregory produced a number of books of retellings of stories taken from Irish mythology. Born into a class that identified closely with British rule, she turned against it. Her conversion to cultural nationalism, as evidenced by her writings, was emblematic of many of the political struggles to occur in Ireland during her lifetime.

Beatrice Ethel Grimshaw was a writer and traveller of Irish origin, for many years based in Papua New Guinea.

Anna Maria Hall was an Irish novelist who often published as "Mrs. S. C. Hall". She married Samuel Carter Hall, a writer on art, who described her in Retrospect of a Long Life, from 1815 to 1883. She was born Anna Maria Fielding in Dublin, but left Ireland for England at the age of 15.

Koizumi Yakumo , born Patrick Lafcadio Hearn, was a Japanese writer of Greek-Irish descent. He is best remembered for his books about Japanese culture, especially his collections of legends and ghost stories, such as Kwaidan: Stories and Studies of Strange Things. In the United States, he is also known for his writings about New Orleans, based on his decade-long stay there.

Mary Anne Holmes was an Irish poet and writer.

C. Morton Horne (1885–1916) was an Irish writer and musical comedy performer who lost his life on a battlefield in France during the First World War.

Margaret Wolfe Hungerford, née Hamilton,, was an Irish novelist whose light romantic fiction was popular throughout the English-speaking world in the late 19th century.

Eyles Irwin (1751–1817) was an Irish poet and writer. He rose in the East India Company's service from a civil servant to superintendent of the company's affairs in China, but failed to gain a place on the board of directors.

Julia Kavanagh was an Irish novelist, born at Thurles in Tipperary, Ireland—then part of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland. Her numerous contributions to literature have classified her as one of the non-canonical minor novelist of the Victorian period (1837–1901). Although she is mainly known for the novel and tales she wrote, she also published important non-fiction works that explored the theme of female political, moral and philosophical contributions to society. The appeal of her works is represented by the fact that several of her works have been translated into French, German, Italian and Swedish. Her texts also reached North America, where some of her works appeared in Littel's Living Age, an American magazine. Moreover, she was known to celebrated writers of domestic fiction such as Charles Dickens.

Michael Kelly was an Irish singer (tenor), composer and theatrical manager who made an international career of importance in musical history. One of the leading figures in British musical theatre around the turn of the nineteenth century, and a close associate of Richard Sheridan's, he had been a friend of Mozart and Paisiello, and created roles in operas of both. With his friend Nancy Storace, he was one of the first singers in that age from Britain and Ireland to make a front-rank reputation in Italy and Austria. In Italy he was also known as O'Kelly or even Signor Ochelli. Although the primary source for his life is his Reminiscences, it has been said 'Any statement of Kelly's is immediately suspect.'

Margaret King (1773–1835), also known as Lady Mount Cashell and Mrs Mason, was an Irish hostess, writer, traveller, and medical adviser. Despite her wealthy aristocratic background, she had republican sympathies, shaped in part by having been a favoured pupil of Mary Wollstonecraft. In Italy in later life, she reciprocated her governess's care by offering maternal aid and advice to Wollstonecraft's daughter Mary Shelley and her travelling companions, husband Percy Bysshe Shelley and stepsister Claire Clairmont.

Richard Kirwan, LL.D, FRS, FRSE MRIA was an Irish geologist and chemist. He was one of the last supporters of the theory of phlogiston.

Joseph Thomas Sheridan Le Fanu was an Irish writer of Gothic tales, mystery novels, and horror fiction. He was a leading ghost story writer of his time, central to the development of the genre in the Victorian era. M. R. James described Le Fanu as "absolutely in the first rank as a writer of ghost stories". Three of his best-known works are the locked-room mystery Uncle Silas, the lesbian vampire novella Carmilla, and the historical novel The House by the Churchyard.

Daniel Mac Carthy (Glas) was an author of historical fiction, Irish history and biography, born in London of Irish descent. Mac Carthy was in correspondence with a large circle of archaeologists, antiquarians and early pioneers of Irish scholarship during the Irish historical awakening of the 19th century, as evidenced in letters found in collections such as the Royal Irish Academy and Cork City and County Archives.

Sister Mary Stanislaus MacCarthy (1849–1897) was an Irish poet, educator and nun. MacCarthy was a daughter of poet Denis Florence MacCarthy, who wrote as "Desmond of The Nation" and Elizabeth MacCarthy.

Charles Henry Mackintosh was a nineteenth-century Christian preacher, dispensationalist, writer of Bible commentaries, magazine editor and member of the Plymouth Brethren.

L. T. Meade was the pseudonym of Elizabeth Thomasina Meade Smith (1844–1914), a prolific writer of girls' stories. She was born in Bandon, County Cork, Ireland, daughter of Rev. R. T. Meade, of Nohoval, County Cork. She later moved to London, where she married Alfred Toulmin Smith in September 1879.

Frances Margaret Milne was an Irish-born American author and librarian.

Thomas Moore was an Irish writer, poet and lyricist celebrated for his Irish Melodies. Their setting of English-language verse to old Irish tunes marked the transition in popular Irish culture from Irish to English. Politically, Moore was recognised in England as a press, or "squib", writer for the aristocratic Whigs; in Ireland he was accounted a Catholic patriot. Married to a Protestant actress and hailed as "Anacreon Moore" after the classical Greek composer of drinking songs and erotic verse, Moore made no profession of piety. But in the controversies that surrounded Catholic Emancipation he was seen to defend the tradition of the Church in Ireland against both evangelising Protestants and uncompromising lay Catholics. Longer prose works reveal more radical sympathies: a Life and Death of Lord Edward Fitzgerald, the United Irish leader depicted as a martyr in the cause of democratic reform; and, complementing Maria Edgeworth's Castle Rackrent, Memoirs of Captain Rock, a saga, not of Anglo-Irish landowners, but of their exhausted tenants driven to the semi-insurrection of "Whiteboyism". Today, however, Moore is remembered almost alone either for his Irish Melodies or, less generously, for the role he is thought to have played in the loss of the memoirs of his friend Lord Byron.

Sydney, Lady Morgan, was an Irish novelist, best known as the author of The Wild Irish Girl.

Arthur Murphy, also known by the pseudonym Charles Ranger, was an Irish writer.

Sister Nivedita was an Irish teacher, author, social activist, school founder and disciple of Swami Vivekananda. She spent her childhood and early youth in Ireland. She was engaged to marry a Welsh youth, but he died soon after their engagement.

Roger O'Connor (1762-1834) was an Irish nationalist and writer, known for the controversies surrounding his life and writings, notably his fanciful history of the Irish people, the Chronicles of Eri. He was the brother of Arthur O'Connor and the father of Feargus O'Connor and Francisco Burdett O'Connor.

Mary Jane O'Donovan Rossa was an Irish poet and political activist.

Katharine A. O'Keeffe O'Mahoney was an Irish-born American educator, lecturer, and writer. A teacher of poetry to Robert Frost, she was also the author of Famous Irishwomen (1907). O'Mahoney was one of the first Catholic women in New England, if not in the United States, to speak in public from the platform. Among her lectures may be mentioned "A Trip to Ireland" (illustrated); "Religion and Patriotism in English and Irish History" (illustrated); "Mary, Queen of Scots", and "Joan of Arc" ; "An Evening with Milton, including recitations from Paradise Lost", illustrated with fifty views from Dore; "An Evening with Dante, including recitations from the Divine Comedy", illustrated by seventy-six views from Dore; and "The Passion Play of Oberammergau". She founded, and until marriage, edited and published The Sunday Register.

Antoine Ó Raifteirí was an Irish language poet who is often called the last of the wandering bards.

Fanny Parnell born Frances Isabelle Parnell was an Irish poet, Irish nationalist, and the sister of Charles Stewart Parnell and Anna Catherine Parnell, important figures in nineteenth century Ireland.

William Pennefather (1816-1873) was an Irish Anglican cleric who spent most of his adult life in England. He was famous for his hymns and sermons, and also for missionary work with Catherine Pennefather. Catherine founded several projects in his name in the twenty years after his death.

Margaret Frances Sullivan was an Irish-born American author, journalist, and editor. She contributed to the principal American magazines, and her editorials, though unsigned, caused national comment. She was an editorial writer on Chicago daily newspapers and for journals in New York City and Boston; chief editorial writer for the Times-Herald, 1895; and editorial writer and art critic for the Chicago Chronicle, 1901.

Baroness Jemima von Tautphoeus was an Irish novelist writing in English. She spent much of her life in Germany and wrote several stories that deal with Bavarian life, manners and history.

William Thompson was an Irish political and philosophical writer and social reformer, developing from utilitarianism into an early critic of capitalist exploitation whose ideas influenced the cooperative, trade union and Chartist movements as well as Karl Marx.

Mary Tighe was an Anglo-Irish poet.

Melesina Trench was an Irish writer, poet and diarist. During her lifetime she was known more for her beauty than her writing, and it wasn't until her son, Richard Chenevix Trench, published her diaries posthumously in 1861 that her work received notice.

Father Peadar Ua Laoghaire (Irish pronunciation: [ˈpʲad̪ˠəɾˠ oː ˈl̪ˠeːɾʲə], first name locally [ˈpʲad̪ˠəɾʲ]; also Peadar Ó Laoghaire was an Irish writer and Catholic priest, who is regarded today as one of the founders of modern literature in Irish.

Ethel Lilian Voynich, née Boole was an Irish novelist and musician, and a supporter of several revolutionary causes. She was born in Cork, but grew up in England. Voynich was a significant figure, not only on the late Victorian literary scene, but also in Russian émigré circles. She is best known for her novel The Gadfly, which became hugely popular in her lifetime, especially in Russia.

Jane Francesca Agnes, Lady Wilde was an Irish poet under the pen name "Speranza" and supporter of the nationalist movement. Lady Wilde had a special interest in Irish folktales, which she helped to gather and was the mother of Oscar Wilde and Willie Wilde.

Katherine Wilmot was an Irish traveller and diarist.

Martha Wilmot was an Irish traveller and diarist.