Dora Sigerson Shorter (1866-1918)
15 February 2019
“Up and down the streets I wandered till dawn grew gray, but no dawn arose in my heart, only black night for ever.” – “Transmigration” (1900) Dora Sigerson Shorter (1866-1918) was born in Clare Street, Dublin. Both of her parents were writers—her father was the noted surgeon and poet George Sigerson (1836-1925). In 1895 she married the English literary critic Clement King Shorter and relocated to London. Early in her career she contributed to magazines such as Irish Monthly and Samhain, and became friendly with the political activist Alice Furlong and the author Katharine Tynan. Shorter’s volumes of poetry include …
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Ethna Carbery (1866-1902)
14 February 2019
“One bleak night in autumn a sound outside drew him to the door, and opening it, he stood listening.” – “The Wee Gray Woman” (1903) Ethna Carbery (1866-1902) was the pen name of journalist, writer, poet, and patriot Anna MacManus. She was born Anna Bella Johnston in Ballymena, Co. Antrim on 3 December 1866, and started publishing poems and short stories in Irish periodicals at the age of fifteen. She was one of the co-founders of the Daughters of Ireland, a radical nationalist women’s organisation led by Maud Gonne. With the poet and writer Alice Milligan, Carbery published two nationalist …
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Clotilde Graves (1863-1932)
13 February 2019
“Only the dead are faithful to Love—because they are dead,” she said. “The living live on—and forget!” – “A Vanished Hand” (1914)
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Katharine Tynan (1859-1931)
12 February 2019
“Any whose business brought them to the attic looked in the corners warily, while they stayed, but the servants did not like to go there alone.” – “The First Wife” (1895)
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Lady Gregory (1852-1932)
11 February 2019
“He called to it and said, ‘Tell me what you are?’ ” – “The Unquiet Dead” (1920)
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B. M. Croker (1849-1920)
9 February 2019
“Why was I conscious of a beating heart, accompanied by a scarcely defined, but undeniable dread?” – “The Red Woollen Necktie” (1896)
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L. T. Meade (1844-1914)
8 February 2019
“She stands there at the foot of the bed; she wears a hood, and her face is yellow. She has been dead a long time.” – “The Woman with the Hood” (1897)
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Rosa Mulholland (1841-1921)
7 February 2019
“The lonely graveyard is far away, an’ the dead man is hard to raise—” – “Not to Be Taken at Bed-Time” (1865)
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Lady Wilde (1821-1896)
5 February 2019
“And no one knew how the flowers came into her dead hand.” – “The Child’s Dream” (1887)
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Anna Maria Hall (1800-1881)
4 February 2019
“Granny, did you know why your friend ventured so fearlessly into the ghost’s territories?” – “The Dark Lady” (1847)
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On Designing A.E.’s Selected Poems
13 January 2019
Occasionally I like to write about how a Swan River book can come together. Back in 2015, I wrote a short piece on how we assembled our edition of Lafcadio Hearn’s Insect Literature, a beautiful book that is now unfortunately out of print. (Though you can still read about how we put it together!) This time I’d like to write a little about Selected Poems by A.E. (George William Russell, 1867-1935), which we published in April 2017 to coincide with the bicentenary of the great poet’s birth. A few years prior to the sesquicentenary, I realised there was no proper …
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Our Haunted Year: 2018
16 December 2018
Running Swan River Press can be a difficult job. The hours are long, usually after returning home from my day job (also weekends), and any financial risks are wholly my own. The victories are incremental, only often partly enjoyed with my attention fixed on what the next challenge might be. That’s why it’s nice to sit down with a cup of coffee, some homemade cranberry bread, and reflect on some of the successes of this past year. I’m always pleasantly surprised at how many there are. The first book of the year was R. B. Russell’s Death Makes Strangers of …
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