Louise Imogen Guiney (January 7, 1861 – November 2, 1920) was an American poet, essayist and editor, born in Roxbury, Massachusetts.

Biography

The daughter of Gen. Patrick R. Guiney, an Irish-born American Civil War officer and lawyer, from County Tipperary and Jeannette Margaret Doyle, she was raised Roman Catholic and educated at the Notre Dame convent school in Boston and at the Academy of the Sacred Heart in Providence, Rhode Island, from which she graduated in 1879. Over the next 20 years, she worked at various jobs, including serving as a postmistress and working in the field of cataloging at the Boston Public Library. She was a member of several literary and social clubs, and according to her friend Ralph Adams Cram was "the most vital and creative personal influence" on their circle of writers and artists in Boston (see Visionists). In 1901, Guiney moved to Oxford, England, to focus on her poetry and essay writing. She donated a crucifix sculpture to the church of St Mary and St Nicholas, Littlemore, to mark the centenary of Cardinal Newman's birth in 1901. She soon began to suffer from illness and was no longer able to write poetry. She was a contributor to The Atlantic Monthly, Scribner's Magazine, McClure's, Blackwood's Magazine, Dublin Review, The Catholic World, and the Catholic Encyclopedia. With Gwenllian Morgan, Guiney prepared materials for an edition and biography of the seventeenth-century Anglo-Welsh Metaphysical poet Henry Vaughan. Neither Guiney nor Morgan lived to complete the project, however, but their research was used by F. E. Hutchinson for his 1947 biography Henry Vaughan.

Death and legacy

Guiney died of a stroke near Gloucestershire, England, at age 59, leaving much of her work unfinished. Her life and works caught the attention of the historian and writer Eva Tenison who unusually published books about her under her own name. In the year after she died Tenison published, Louise Imogen Guiney; an Appreciation. In 1923 she published Louise Imogen Guiney: Her Life and Works, 1861-1920 and A Bibliography of Louise Imogen Guiney, 1861-1920. Tenison also published, The Recusant Poets: An Unpublished Work of Louise Imogen Guiney and Fr. Geoffrey Bliss, S.J. In 1926, Guiney's sister Grace published a posthumous letter collection.

Sources