As Dr. Jonathan Nauman and Dr. Holly Faith Nelson note, the Irish American poet and essayist Louise Imogen Guiney (1861-1920) was praised by some of her contemporaries as one of the best American writers of her time.
A soon to be released book on Guiney, Borderlands: The Art and Scholarship of Louise Imogen Guiney, is co-edited by Dr. Jonathan Nauman and Dr. Holly Faith Nelson. Scheduled for publication by The Vaughan Association in November 2021, this book is “the first edited collection of original essays ever published on Guiney, and the first volume to anthologise a wide selection of both her poetry and prose,” as Nauman and Nelson remark. Dr. Nelson also contributed two chapters to the volume, one co-authored with TWU English professor Dr. Katharine Bubel.
Nauman and Nelson note that “during Guiney’s life in Boston and Britain, she composed seventeen volumes of poetry and prose, contributed to many periodicals, edited and translated literary and religious texts, and wrote thousands of letters, many to and about central fin-de-siècle literary figures.”
They explain that “Guiney was an intimate of American novelist Sarah Orne Jewett and a protégé of American poet and social reformer Annie Adams Fields. She was also associated with the counter-cultural aesthetic movement in turn-of-the century Boston and, while in Oxford, was active in its vibrant Roman Catholic subculture.”
"Guiney’s writings reveal the expanding role of women authors and literary critics on the cusp of modernism, and on transatlantic travel, dialogue, and culture at the beginning of the twentieth century."
Louise Imogen Guiney and the expanding role of twentieth-century women authors
Jonathan Nauman and Holly Faith Nelson detail the significance of the life and works of Louise Imogen Guiney.
As they illuminate, “The writings of Guiney – who moved freely between Britain and America, and who was influenced by and influenced the literary and religious communities of both nations – are exemplary of the complex ebb and flow of cultural values across the Atlantic” at this moment in history.
They also observe that “Guiney’s writings reveal the expanding role of women authors and literary critics on the cusp of modernism, and on transatlantic travel, dialogue, and culture at the beginning of the twentieth century.”
Guiney and the feminist movement: a complicated relationship
Although Guiney lived a “radically different” existence than many women in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, “Her relationship to the feminist movement is a complicated one,” said Nauman and Nelson.
The co-editors explain that while some critics identify her as a “bohemian poet” and a “nineteenth-century precursor” to the “European American ‘new woman’” poets, others present her as a “conservative Catholic.”
“Our volume helps to situate Guiney in the rich cultural contexts in which she wrote as a female, Irish American, Catholic author,” Nauman and Nelson said of their new book.
They further explore how Guiney’s “vast correspondence with the photographer and publisher Fred Holland Day, and with other publishers, sheds significant light on the development of periodical culture in fin-de-siècle America, particularly the pre-publication reviewing systems,” indicating that the letters “demonstrate the significant role played by women in helping to establish the reputation of male authors at the time.”
See also — TWU’s Dr. Holly Nelson investigates siege warfare in early modern literature, highlights heroism of women and the labouring class:
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Reading Louise Imogen Guiney – where to begin
For anyone new to reading Louise Imogen Guiney, Dr. Nelson recommends reading her poems “The Knight Errant,” “The Wild Ride,” “Open Time,” “Sunday Chimes in the City,” and “Fog.”
In terms of Guiney’s essays or articles, Dr. Nelson recommends “Wilful Sadness in Literature” and “Irish” in her essay collection Patrins and the last chapter, “On the Passing of the Little People,” in her volume Brownies and Bogles, in which, to some extent, Guiney anticipates the ideas of J.R.R. Tolkien and C.S. Lewis on “fairy stories.”
Gratitude to project collaborators
Dr. Nelson credits co-editor Dr. Nauman for the inspiration behind the production of the volume, Borderlands: The Art and Scholarship of Louise Imogen Guiney. She expresses, “Jonathan has dedicated many years to studying the life and work of Louise Imogen Guiney. His enthusiasm and expertise on the subject drew me in about a decade ago and it has been an honour to work alongside such a fine and gifted scholar on this long-term project. Without his passion and vision, we would have never reached the finish line.” She and Dr. Nauman are also most grateful for the remarkable contributors to the collection who hail from Canada, the United States, and the United Kingdom (chapter authors include Drs. Patricia J. Fanning, Libby MacDonald Bischof, Katharine Bubel, Bridget M. Chapman, Alex Murray, Robert Wilcher, Jonathan Nauman, and Holly Faith Nelson); they worked in exceedingly trying circumstances during the COVID-19 pandemic.
Two TWU English undergraduate students were also invaluable research assistants on the project: Anne Hill and Faith Nelson.
Finally, Dr. Nelson is grateful for the support of the Dean of FHSS, Dr. Todd Martin, who made it possible to carve out the time and space to undertake this journey into the life and works of Louise Imogen Guiney.
Jonathan Nauman and Holly Faith Nelson's Overview of Guiney’s Life and Works
The Irish American author Louise Imogen Guiney (1861-1920), whose life bridges two watershed military events – the American Civil War and World War I – was the first poet of Irish immigrant extraction to gain acceptance by the Boston literary elites at the end of the nineteenth century. She was an intimate of Sarah Orne Jewett and a protégé of Annie Adams Fields. Willa Cather considered her work exemplary of the best American poetry of the time. Guiney was also associated with the counter-cultural aesthetic royalist movement in Boston, which included architect Ralph Adams Cram and pioneer photographer Fred Holland Day. As a reader for Day’s prestigious literary press, Copeland & Day, Guiney played a major role in his decision to publish the poetry of Stephen Crane. A recognized literary figure in Boston and also in America at large, Guiney supported the aesthetics of her Boston royalist set against the rising naturalist movement but remained open to whatever real talent might emerge in the opposing school.
In England, where Guiney lived and worked as a scholar, journalist, and editor for much of her adult life, she met and interacted with such figures as Edmund Gosse, Henry James, Herbert Clarke, and William Butler Yeats. During the early years of the twentieth century, she studied at the Bodleian Library in Oxford, where she researched and edited the works of Hurrell Froude, Katherine Philips, Henry Vaughan and Edmund Campion, among others. Guiney also actively participated in the vibrant Roman Catholic subculture in Oxford. A guest of the Meynells, she became a correspondent for the Ave Maria, a new American Catholic periodical based at Notre Dame. This connection and others enabled her to share with her American audience the hitherto unknown talents of Gerard Manley Hopkins and Lionel Johnson. She undertook, with help from Jesuit friends, an edition of recusant poets from the sixteenth to the nineteenth centuries, leaving this manuscript unpublished at her death.
During her life in New England and Great Britain, Guiney composed eight volumes of prose and nine volumes of poetry. She also made contributions to a number of periodicals, edited volumes of early-modern works, translated Italian and French works into English, and engaged in voluminous correspondence, in many cases with and about central literary figures in turn-of-the-century America and England, often directly affecting the print culture of the period.
Immediately following her death, the Boston poet and novelist Alice Brown published an impassioned biographical memoir on Guiney; and in 1923 the English historian Eva Mabel Tenison published a full-length study of Guiney’s life. In 1926, Louise’s younger cousin Grace Guiney published The Letters of Louise Imogen Guiney, a two-volume selection of correspondence much-recognised for its felicitous erudition and effortless charm; and in the following year Guiney’s valedictory Happy Ending: The Collected Lyrics of Louise Imogen Guiney (1909) was reissued with a supplement of later poems.
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