Mary Somerville (1780-1872) was a talented science writer and polymath with an extraordinary, mostly self-taught, knowledge of mathematics. In an era when most women lacked access to formal education, she influenced the way we think about science and created a space for herself in the intellectual world of the nineteenth century.

She was born on 26 December 1780 in Jedburgh, Scotland, the fifth of seven children of Captain, later Vice-Admiral, Sir William George Fairfax and his second wife Margaret Charters. Her childhood was spent in Burntisland, a seaport town across the Firth of Forth from Edinburgh where she was allowed to run wild for the first ten years of her life.

Self-portrait of Mary Somerville, c.1820. A skilled painter who once studied with artist Alexander Nasmyth, she portrays herself seated with quill and paper in hand.

Education and emerging scientific interests

Returning from one of his long sea voyages her father, disappointed to find her unable to write and barely able to read, sent her to Miss Primrose’s Boarding School for Girls in Musselburgh, which she hated. Although she recalled emerging from her time there ‘like a wild animal escaped out of a cage’, she had improved her reading and learned some simple arithmetic, grammar and French. The twelve months she endured there was the only formal education of her very long life.

In the ensuing years, she was tutored in dancing, piano, drawing and painting, needlework and the use of globes. Not quite the education for a future mathematician but accomplishments deemed suitable for a gentleman’s daughter and desirable skills for a future wife. Less conventionally and quite by accident she also began a life-long study of algebra, following a chance glimpse of an equation in the puzzle section of a ladies’ monthly fashion magazine. She acquired Euclid’s Elements and Bonnycastle’s Algebra on overhearing her painting teacher Alexander Nasmyth mention that Euclid’s theories, which explained perspective in painting, also formed the basis for understanding astronomy and mechanical sciences. She studied these independently and in secret, her father having forbidden her to read mathematics fearing such behaviour could injure the tender female frame. This and other outspoken criticism of ‘unwomanly behaviour’ only sharpened her resolve to learn the subject. She believed in the right of women to fufiI their true potential and in her Memoirs she voiced her frustration: “I was annoyed that my turn for reading was so much disapproved of, and thought it unjust that women should have been given a desire for knowledge if it were wrong to acquire it.”

Family life

At the same time, in other ways she lived the traditional role of the daughter of a well-connected family, attending social events and as a shy, petite, beautiful young woman, with an apparent sweet and polite manner she was dubbed the ‘Rose of Jedburgh’ among Edinburgh society.

In 1804, she married Captain Samuel Greig, who became the Russian Vice-Consul in London. Her husband did not support her studies: ‘He had a very low opinion of the capacity of my sex, and had neither knowledge of, nor interest in, science of any kind.’ When Greig died three years later in 1807, she returned to Scotland with her two young sons. Being a widow gave her a level of financial and social independence; she was now able to study more openly, although her family still considered these efforts both eccentric and foolish.

She studied mathematics and physical astronomy, including Newton’s Principia and got to know Edinburgh’s leading intellectuals including Dr William Wallace, later professor of mathematics at Edinburgh University. She made a name for herself when solving a problem in The Mathematical Repository, a periodical aimed towards popular mathematical interests, for which she was awarded a silver medal.

In 1812, she married another cousin, Dr William Somerville (1771-1860), inspector of the Army Medical Board and had four more children. He supported and encouraged her academic pursuits and helped Mary develop her interests in the physical sciences, opening doors that allowed her to make the acquaintance of many of the most eminent men of science and thinkers of the day first in Edinburgh, then in London.

Public recognition

‘The magnetic properties of the violet rays of the solar spectrum’, a report of her observations on the magnetising power of sunlight) was the first paper by a woman to be read to the Royal Society and published in its Philosophical Transactions (1826). Although her conclusions were later proved to be incorrect, this article is of great importance being the first experimental paper by a woman to be published in the Society’s journal under her own name. However, since women were barred from entering the Society’s premises, it was read by her husband on her behalf. It was this publication that helped to establish her reputation as a serious scientist. Interestingly in Mike Leigh’s 2014 film Mr Turner, Somerville is seen discussing this experiment with the painter J.M.W. Turner aptly reflecting the intertwining worlds of nineteenth-century art and science.

Books

Mary Somerville’s real contribution to nineteenth-century science was in her powers of analysis rather than original research. She explained complex scientific ideas clearly and made them accessible to a wider audience. She is best known as the author of four books, beginning with Mechanism of the heavens (1831), in which she translated Pierre-Simon Laplace’s Traité de mécanique celeste into English, and as she put it ‘from algebra into common language’. This was achieved by adding her own commentaries and introducing numerous geometrical diagrams. Even so, Somerville’s work still demanded an extremely high level of mathematical competency from its readers: On the Connexion of the Physical Sciences (1834) the 6th edition of which encouraged John Couch Adams to look for and discover the planet Neptune; Physical Geography (1848), which was commonly used as a textbook until the early 20th century; and Molecular and Microscopic Science (1869) which was a summary of the most recent discoveries in chemistry and physics.

Mary Somerville, Mechanism of the Heavens (London: John Murray, 1831)
This book, an English translation and condensed version of the five- volume Traité de mécanique céleste, written by the French astronomer Pierre-Simon Laplace between 1798 and 1825, established Mary Somerville as one of the outstanding figures in early nineteenth-century science.

Honours and awards

During her life Mary Somerville received many honorary memberships and titles from distinguished scientific organisations. In 1834, Somerville was made an Honorary Member of the Royal Irish Academy and the Society of Physics and Natural History of Geneva. A year later she was voted into the Royal Astronomical Society and was awarded a civil pension of £300 per year. Eleven Italian scientific societies honoured her between 1840 and 1857 and by 1870 she had also been inducted into the American Philosophical Society and the American Geographical and Statistical Society.

She also used her fame to advocate for women’s rights. In 1868, hers was the first signature on John Mills’ suffrage petition. Her reputation was such that there is an island, a lunar crater, an asteroid, and an Oxford College named after her and she features on the Royal Bank of Scotland £10 banknote issued in 2017.

Somerville engaged in the most advanced study of mathematics, physics and astronomy right up until her death in Naples on 29 November 1872, less than a month before her ninety-second birthday. ‘Whatever difficulty we might experience in the middle of the nineteenth century in choosing a king of science, there could be no question whatever as to the queen of science’,The Morning Post obituarist declared on 2 December 1872.

Royal Irish Academy certificate of election for Mary Somerville. Image © Somerville College. Courtesy of the Principal and Fellows of Somerville College

Role model

In many respects Mary Somerville adhered to the rules of a society lady in the nineteenth century, marrying, successfully managing a household and raising children but she defied convention by forging a stellar scientific career in a man’s world. She remains an important role model in science and mathematics, providing particular inspiration to women pursuing scientific education.

Antoinette Prout
Assistant Librarian

Exhibition

Mary Somerville was one of five Honorary Members of the Royal Irish Academy who featured in the exhibition ‘Prodigies of Learning: Academy Women in the Nineteenth Century’

Main image: Portrait by James Rannie Swinton (1816–1888) c.1844. Image © Somerville College. Courtesy of the Principal and Fellows of Somerville College.

In early March 2019 a two-day seminar will be held in the Royal Irish Academy library to explore the contexts and contents of an important sixteenth-century Connacht manuscript miscellany. When the Academy purchased this Irish manuscript in 1851, as part of the collection assembled by Sir William Betham (1779–1853), it was known as ‘Betham 145’. Nowadays it is known simply by its Academy shelf-mark, 23 N 10, or else as the ‘Book of Ballycummin’ based on its presumed place of origin.

Among those who spent time in Seán Ó Maoil Chonaire’s school at Ballycummin on the banks of the Shannon in north Roscommon in 1575, the manuscript would have been known as Aodh’s book, since Aodh was the principal scribe who worked on it. We don’t know his surname. When a fellow scribe, Dubhthach, copied a text on the Triads of Ireland into the manuscript in late June 1575 he added a note (p. 101) addressed to Aodh.

‘My prayer for your book, o Aodh, on the first Monday after the feast of St John. Baile Tibhaird on Blá Maige my place of writing in the company of Seán Ó Maoil Chonaire. I am Dubhthach who wrote that piece for its reliable knowledge, etc., AD 1575.’[1]

Dubhthach’s note addressed to his fellow scribe is interesting also because it reveals that the scribes were consciously selecting texts for inclusion according to their perceived reference value.

RIA, MS 23 N 10, page 101. The first half of the page is the work of Dubhthach, ending with a 4-line note to his fellow student, Aodh, for whom the book was being made in 1575. The main scribe, Aodh, adds ‘Go roibh maith agat’ and then resumes his work on the second half of the page.

During most of the spring and summer of 1575, work on this new manuscript miscellany was done at the house of Seán Ó Maoil Chonaire at Ballycummin, in the parish of Kilmore, in north Roscommon, though some sections were written at a slightly different location, at Ballyhubert (Baile Hoibeard) in the nearby parish of Lissonuffy.[2] It’s interesting that they were still in the company of Seán Ó Maoil Chonaire at the new venue.

The precise exemplars used by the scribes of 23 N 10 are unknown, but the manuscript they made is particularly valuable because it appears to draw on a tradition of Connacht manuscript-making that can be traced back to the lost Cín Dromma Snechta, which may have dated from the early eighth century. The Ballycummin manuscript shares this characteristic with some other sixteenth-century manuscripts including British Library MS Harleian 5280, written by Gilla Riabach Ó Cléirigh at Corrlios Conaill in the parish of Kilmore, Co. Roscommon, and British Library Egerton 88, written 1564–70, as well as Bodleian MS Rawlinson B 512, a miscellany that was partly the work of Uí Mhaoil Chonaire scribes.

It seems that the north Roscommon home of Seán Ó Maoil Chonaire contained some very important manuscript exemplars, and that Seán himself was an active tutor of younger scholars. His was a particularly accessible school, on the banks of the Shannon at Lough Boderg, the river being the highway through which scholars and their manuscripts travelled and maintained contact with other like-minded people throughout the Shannon region.

Townland of Ballycummin, Co. Roscommon, as shown on 1st edition of Ordnance Survey of Ireland, 6-inch map, 1835. © Ordnance Survey Ireland/Government of Ireland. Copyright Permit No. MP 000719

The scribes of RIA MS 23 N 10 do not tell us much about the head of their school. Seán Ó Maoil Chonaire is not an uncommon name, but it is just possible that he was the same Seán Ó Maoil Chonaire whose influence was acknowledged by other scholars more than fifty years later. In 1643, Mícheál Ó Cléirigh’s small Irish dictionary, Focalóir no sanasan nua, was printed at Louvain. Published at the very end of Ó Cléirigh’s life, this Irish dictionary contained an address to the reader in which Ó Cléirigh acknowledged the influence of Séan Ó Maoil Chonaire, ‘chief historian … of the men of Ireland’.[3] Ó Cléirigh was particularly interested in obscure and obsolete Irish words, and mentioned Seán Ó Maoil Chonaire as one who had been able to interpret the relevant older manuscripts.

The scholar acknowledged by Ó Cléirigh may have been the same Seán son of Torna Ó Maoil Chonaire whom Flann Mac Aodhagáin mentioned in his approbation of the Annals of the Four Masters in 1636:

‘numerous the uncertain number of ancient and modern books which I saw written and being transcribed in the school of Seán, son of Tórna Ua Maelchonaire, the tutor of the men of Ireland in general in history and chronology, and who had all that were in Ireland learning that science under his tuition.’[4]

One of the many questions prompted by our important ‘little remnant of the work of the ancients’ is whether or not this renowned historian and keeper of manuscripts who was still remembered in the 1630s and 1640s though no longer alive, was the same teacher whose school at Ballycummin had provided the exemplars for the manuscript now usually referred to as RIA MS 23 N 10. Or was there a Thomond connection?

Listen back to the conference which took place 7 – 8 March 2019 and join in the exploration of Ireland’s medieval literary heritage through the lens of one particularly fascinating manuscript, RIA MS 23 N 10.

Bernadette Cunningham
Deputy Librarian

Further reading

Irish Script on Screen: www.isos.dias.ie [Royal Irish Academy, MS 23 N 10]

Richard I. Best (1954), Facsimiles in collotype of Irish manuscripts, VI: MS 23 N 10 (formerly Betham 145) in the library of the Royal Irish Academy (Dublin: Irish Manuscripts Commission).

Fergus Kelly (ed.) (1976), Audacht Morainn (Dublin: Dublin Institute for Advanced Studies).

Kuno Meyer (ed.) (1906), The Triads of Ireland (Todd Lecture Series, 13) (Dublin: Hodges Figgis).

Arthur K.W. Miller (ed. & transl.) (1880–1), ‘O’Clery’s Irish glossary’, Revue Celtique, 4, pp 349–428; 5, pp 1–69.

Kathleen Mulchrone (1937), Catalogue of Irish manuscripts in the Royal Irish Academy, fasc. 22, cat. no. 967 (Dublin: Royal Irish Academy), pp 2769–80.

Kevin Murray (2018), ‘The late medieval Irish-language manuscript tradition in North Roscommon: the case of Royal Irish Academy MS 23 N 10’, in R. Farrell, K. O’Conor and M. Potter (eds), Roscommon: history and society (Dublin: Geography Publications), pp 191–209.

Tomás Ó Concheanainn (1988), ‘A Connacht medieval literary heritage: texts derived from Cín Dromma Snechtai through Leabhar na hUidhre’, Cambridge Medieval Celtic Studies, 16, 1–40.

Tomás Ó Concheanainn (1990), ‘The textual tradition of Compert Con Culainn’, Celtica, 21, 441–55.

Brian Ó Dálaigh (2008-9), ‘The Uí Mhaoilchonaire of Thomond’, Studia Hibernica, 35, 45–68.

John O’Donovan (ed.) (1851), Annals of the kingdom of Ireland by the Four Masters (7 vols, Dublin).

Nollaig Ó Muraíle (2004), ‘Athchuairt ar lámhscríbhinní Chonnacht’, in Ruairí Ó hUiginn (ed.), Oidhreacht na lámhscríbhinní (Léachtaí Cholm Cille, 34) (Maynooth: An Sagart), 28–104.

Pádraig Ó Riain, et al. (2005), Historical dictionary of Gaelic placenames: Foclóir stairiúil áitainmneacha na Gaeilge. Fascicle 2 (names in B–), (London: Irish Texts Society).

Corkwoman Katherine Wilmot wrote in December 1805 that to ‘draw the character of the Princess Dashkova’ would result only in ‘a wisp of human contradictions’. One of the most important women of the European Enlightenment, the seeds of Dashkova’s legendary status were sown at just 19 years of age, when she played a central role in Catherine II’s 1762 coup that climaxed with the assassination of Peter III, Dashkova’s own godfather.

Dashkova was born in Petersburg in 1743 into one of Russia’s most politically influential families. She was a bookish child and by her teens was fluent in five languages and had amassed a library of 900 volumes. She later recalled, ‘Never would the finest piece of jewelry have given me as much pleasure [as a book]’.

She was widowed at just 20, left with two small children and her late husband’s ruinous gambling debts. Emerging from those years of hardship, in the 1770s she spent several years in Western Europe, partly for her children’s education. She befriended Enlightenment philosophers, English and Irish ‘bluestockings’, and the Wilmot family, who played an important role in her later life.

Left: Journal of Katherine Wilmot, 1806-7. (RIA MS 12 L 31). Right: 1796 copy of a Church Slavonic manuscript describing the marriage of Tsar Mikhail (1613–45), a gift to Martha Wilmot from Dashkova. (RIA MS 12 L 16)

Returning to Russia in 1782, Dashkova shed her former role of lady-in-waiting for that of an academic and correspondent with the greatest thinkers of the age. Catherine II appointed her Director of the Academy of Sciences and the Imperial Academy of the Russian Language, roles that she performed with efficiency and financial acumen. She became an avid promoter of the Russian language, and was the driving force behind the Academy’s six-volume Russian dictionary. Published in 1789–94, it was the first of its kind.

Dashkova also published translations of Hume and Voltaire; articles on education, agriculture, travel, and the influence of French culture in Russia; papers, speeches, letters, plays and poetry. She bequeathed her rich mineralogical collection to Moscow University.

On 23 April 1791, Dashkova became the first woman elected Honorary Member of the Royal Irish Academy. This period saw the peak and gradual decline of her civic life; in 1794, under gathering clouds of political disfavour, she retired from the Russian academies.

Royal Irish Academy Minutes, 23 April, 1791, volume 1, p.70.

Catherine II died in 1796, and was succeeded by her son, Paul I. He resented Dashkova’s role in the coup that killed his father, so he exiled her for a year. Thereafter, she devoted herself to running her rural estate, only visiting Moscow seasonally.

Her memoirs remain one of the most important of the period. They only survive thanks to the efforts of Martha and Katherine Wilmot, who encouraged Dashkova to write her autobiography during their residence with her in 1803–8. Katherine smuggled her copy of the manuscript to Ireland in 1807, while Martha was forced, under pressure from Russian customs officials, to burn her copy when leaving Russia in 1808.

Martha had Dashkova’s permission to publish the memoir, but she did not do so until 1840 due to resistance from Dashkova’s surviving family. Maria Edgeworth, herself elected to honorary Academy membership in 1842, wrote personally to congratulate Martha on the publication, stating, ‘young, old, and middle aged all agree that it is one of the most entertaining pieces of biography we ever read’.

Dashkova would doubtlessly have been pleased with this review, and with the renewed attention paid to her life and legacy in recent years.

By Dr Angela Byrne
DFAT Historian-in-Residence at EPIC The Irish Emigration Museum, and Research Associate at Ulster University

Princess Dashkova featured in our exhibition ‘Prodigies of learning’: Academy women in the nineteenth century.

Listen back to Dr Angela Byrne’s lecture ‘A Woman in an August Sanctuary’: Princess Ekaterina Dashkova, Director of the Russian Academies.

Sources and further reading:

Martha Bradford, [née Wilmot] (ed., trans.), Memoirs of the Princess Daschkaw, Lady of Honour to Catherine II, Empress of All the Russias (2 vols, London: Henry Colburn, 1840). Available at: https://archive.org

Angela Byrne, ‘Princess Dashkova and the Wilmot Sisters,’ Bernadette Cunningham and Siobhán Fitzpatrick (eds), Treasures of the Royal Irish Academy Library (Dublin: Royal Irish Academy, 2009), 248–55.

Angela Byrne, ‘Supplementing the autobiography of Princess Ekaterina Romanovna Dashkova: The Russian diaries of Martha and Katherine Wilmot,’ Irish Slavonic Studies, 23 (2011), 25–34.

Maria Edgeworth to Martha Bradford [née Wilmot], 27 July 1840. BM Add. MS 41295: National Library of Ireland microfilm p1284, 121–6.

H.M. Hyde and Edith Stewart (eds), The Russian journals of Martha and Catherine Wilmot (1934; reprinted New York, 1971).

Michelle Lamarche Marrese, ‘Princess Dashkova and the politics of language in eighteenth-century Russia’, in Derek Offord, Lara Ryazanova-Clarke, Vladislav Rjeoutski and Gesine Argent (eds), French and Russian in Imperial Russia: language, attitudes and identity (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2015), 31–47.

Sue Ann Prince (ed.), The Princess and the patriot: Ekaterina Dashkova, Benjamin Franklin, and the Age of Enlightenment (Philadelphia: American Philosophical Society, 2006).

Alexander Woronzoff-Dashkoff, Dashkova: a life of influence and exile. Transactions of the American Philosophical Society, 97/3 (Philadelphia, 2008).

Main image of Princess Dashkova © The State Hermitage Museum, St Petersburg

It is rare that Irish scribes included a detailed description of the manuscript-making project on which they were engaged, but the Book of Knockninny is an exception. This 300-year-old manuscript is now RIA MS C vi 1 (catalogue no. 936) and extends to 890 pages. The story of its origins is worth recalling.

Commissioning a manuscript

Séamus Mág Uidhir, principal scribe of the Book of Knockninny was employed by Captain Brian Mág Uidhir (c.1660-1726), of Knockninny, County Fermanagh. He continued the work of another scribe, Toirdhealbhach Ó Dóaláin. The scribe(s) had been given specific instructions by the patron, who knew exactly what kind of manuscript he wanted. Captain Brian Mág Uidhir envisaged a monumental ‘Book of Knockninny’ that would be an authoritative historical compilation, drawn from the best available historical sources in the Irish language.

The scribe recorded that two generations earlier, another Brian Mág Uidhir (c.1585-1655) had commissioned transcripts of historical works prepared by the Four Masters, along with other Irish texts, but that manuscript which dated from 1638 was in poor condition. It seems that the modern medium of paper used in the 1630s in preference to the more expensive vellum had produced a less-than-robust manuscript, and it had worn out. In 1718 Captain Brian Mág Uidhir decided to pay for a replacement.

Succession of kings from the new Book of Knockninny, part 1, p. 193

Making a manuscript

The scribe explained the method used to source relevant historical texts for the new manuscript to be known as the ‘Book of Knockninny’. The patron, Captain Brian Mág Uidhir, contacted all Irish scholars in the region where he lived, asking them to bring to him whatever good Irish books they could acquire, and he supplied ink, paper and all other necessary materials, and paid the scribes for the copies they made.

‘And they brought together from every quarter the chief books of Conquest and the histories of the kingdom to Knockninny, so that the house is the source and dwelling-place of the best Knowledge to be found in Ireland. No one need henceforth search for more perfect or more reliable authorities than the books of Knockninny, if he is prepared to trust The Book of Lecan Mhic Fhirbhisigh, the Books of Ó Cléirigh, of Ó Duibhgeannáin, and Ó Maoil Chonaire, the Psalter of Cashel, the books of Clonmacnois, the poem of Ua Dubhagáin and Doctor Keating, with many other compilations approved by different authorities.’ (translated in Walsh, 1947, p.244)

The contents of the Book of Knockninny include Gabháltas na hÉireann, Réim Ríoghraidhe na hÉireann, Seanchas na Naomh nÉireannach, Cath Mhaighe Léana, Teagasc Rí Solmain, the Ó Cléirigh recension of the Leabhar Gabhála, and a variety of historical poems. Drawing on the older Book of Knockninny, it incorporated material from major seventeenth-century compilations by the Four Masters as well Foras feasa ar Éirinn, Geoffrey Keating’s narrative prose history of early Ireland completed in the early 1630s. Poems from the early seventeenth-century poetic dispute known as Iomarbhagh na bhFileadh, were also copied into the new manuscript in 1718. A few years earlier, Brian Mág Uidhir’s scribes transcribed, in a separate volume, the major genealogical tract of Dubhaltach Mac Fhirbhisigh (now RIA MS C vi 2).

Extract from concluding section of Book of Invasions, RIA MS C vi 1, part 2, p. 253

A note at the end of part one of the new Book of Knockninny gives the date of completion of that part as 22 December 1718.

‘… don cCaiptín oirdhearc onórach .i. Brian Mháguidhir an 2 lá fichiod do mí December 1718’. Colophon at end of part 1 of Book of Knockninny, RIA MS C vi 1, p. 288, giving date of completion as 22 December 1718.

Patronage

The scribe of the Book of Knockninny included an explanation of how the manuscript came to be written, and he was lavish in his praise of the patron.

‘And this Brian is the best known man in all Fermanagh and the surrounding counties … he is a person full of learning, wisdom and acumen replete with kindliness and charity, with generosity and noblesse; a maintainer of widows, orphans and the poor; a special benefactor of the clergy; a strong energetic smiter of the unjust and the law-breaker; a fair-minded upright individual promoting the common good; a keeper of a hostelry for English and Irish, musicians and literati; and we know not one who can be compared with him in any of these distinctions.’ (translated in Walsh, 1947, p. 243)

Motive

The compiler explained the cultural/political motivation and context for creating a new authoritative historical manuscript in 1718.

‘When the survivors of this poor Nation, after the wars between Kings William and James, were in misery and oppression, plundered and devastated, and under such persecution and slavery that scarce one of them had a care for amenity or refinement, this keen active-minded Patron bethought himself that the respected immemorial old Irish customs were in danger of being suppressed and lost in the country, and more particularly the mother tongue, the Gaelic, in consequence of the dispersal and wiping out of all the poets and professors of Ireland except a few.’(Walsh, 1947, p. 243)

Captain Brian Maguire was conscious of his status in society, and patronage of Gaelic scholarship was one way of enhancing his reputation, and his sponsorship of the Book of Knockninny was a way of associating his (minor) branch of the family with earlier influential leaders in Fermanagh.

Provenance

The Book of Knockninny probably remained in Fermanagh for a time, but by the early nineteenth century it had been acquired by the Duke of Buckingham and was in his library at Stowe, Buckinghamshire. It was acquired by the Royal Irish Academy, along with its companion volume of genealogies, as part of the Stowe/Ashburnham collection presented by the British Government in 1883. Events to mark the 300th anniversary of its completion are being planned for 2019 in Knockninny.

1883 bookplate with RIA shelf-mark for the Book of Knockninny

Bernadette Cunningham
Deputy Librarian

Further reading

Bernadette Cunningham & Raymond Gillespie, ‘The purposes of patronage: Brian Maguire of Knockninny and his manuscripts’, Clogher Record, 12 (1988), pp 38-49. https://www.jstor.org/stable/27699271

On the patron of the Book of Knockninny, see Diarmuid Breathnach & Máire Ní Mhurchú, ‘Mag Uidhir, Brian (fl.1660-1726)’, https://www.ainm.ie/Bio.aspx?ID=1368

On the patron of an earlier Book of Knockninny, see Diarmuid Breathnach & Máire Ní Mhurchú, ‘Mag Uidhir, Brian (c.1585-1655)’, https://www.ainm.ie/Bio.aspx?ID=1367

For an analytical description of the contents of the Book of Knockninny, see Elizabeth FitzPatrick, Catalogue of Irish manuscripts in the Royal Irish Academy, fasciculus XXI (Dublin: Royal Irish Academy, 1940), no. 936, pp 2697-2705.

Microfilm copy of RIA MS C vi 1 is available on RIA microfilm N 1113. The manuscript has not yet been digitised.

Editions of some of the major prose texts found in the Book of Knockninny are published in the following works:

R.A.S. Macalister & J. Mac Neill (eds), Leabhar gabhála: the book of conquests of Ireland: the recension of Micheál Ó Cléirigh (Dublin: Hodges Figgis, 1916).

Lambert McKenna (ed.), Iomarbhágh na bhFileadh: the contention of the bards (2 vols, London, Irish Texts Society, 1918).

Katharine Simms, Bardic poetry database https://bardic.celt.dias.ie/ provides a guide to individual Irish poems, their manuscript copies, published editions, and thematic content. The historical poems contained in the book of Knockninny are included in the database.

Paul Walsh, ‘The Maguires and Irish learning’, in Irish men of learning (Dublin: At the Sign of the Three Candles, 1947), pp 241-5, includes an English translation of the scribal preface which described the Maguire manuscript-making project.

Paul Walsh (ed.), Genealogiae regum et sanctorum Hiberniae, by the Four Masters, edited from the manuscript of Michél Ó Cléirigh (Maynooth: Record Society, 1918).

The genealogical tract transcribed by Seamus Mág Uidhir and preserved in a companion volume, RIA C vi 2, has been published from Dubhaltach Mac Fhirbhisigh’s original manuscript in Nollaig Ó Muraíle (ed.), Leabhar Mór na nGenealach; the great book of Irish genealogies (5 vols, Dublin: Eamonn de Búrca, 2003)

Main image: From title page of Catalogue of Irish books published by Clódhanna Ltd., for Connradh na Gaedhilge (Dublin, 1915)

Letterpress printing is an old and messy industrial craft going back to the mid-1440s when Johann Gutenberg invented moveable metal type in Mainz. Gutenberg’s invention spread very quickly across much of Europe. For example, in Florence, in 1488, there were already nearly 200 printing houses humming, with some casting type and also paper making.

The printing press arrived late in Ireland – not until 1550 – and the first book was printed a year later, The Boke of the Common Praier’ The press was brought from England by a seasoned printer, Humphrey Powell, who was given £20 by the British Court ‘to underpin the state’s religious formation, and … to advance the government’s ecclesiastical and political programme’.

The Boke of the common praier (Dublin, 1551). SR 23 M 57.

Some decades later Irish printers made their influence felt beyond the Isle. Research material is plentiful on Irishman John Dunlap, who printed America’s Declaration of Independence in Philadelphia in 1776, and on hundreds of other Irish printers who sailed to the young nation. Likewise, one can find great sources for the 300-year-old history of papermaking in Ireland. It’s interesting to note the variety of printing — for example, Ireland was the second country, in 1870, to print postcards. The Austro-Hungarian Empire was the first, a year earlier. The stories of Irish printing go on and on.

For fourteen years I have researched, written and then printed in the Gutenberg tradition of handset type brief stories on aspects of Irish printing history, which is annually bound in It’s a small world, a UK book about letterpress printing.

It’s a small world (Wivenhoe, Essex, 2018)

John Dunlap, Irish printer of the Declaration of Independence / James C. Wilder (Wild Apple Press, 2010)

In Dublin, on Haddington Road, located in the old Beggar’s Bush Barracks, is a Museum dedicated to printing. On tours of the Museum, visitors can see linotype machines, cases of moveable metal type, printing presses and paper cutters. One can additionally see up close an original copy of the 1916 Proclamation of the Irish Republic.

Renowned for its unrivalled Irish manuscript collections, when one thinks of the Library at the Royal Irish Academy one might not imagine it to be an exceptional source for material on the history of Irish printing, but there are many treasures there. The Academy was founded in 1785 and a reading room was added in 1852 to handle growing collections that have made it a world-class Library.

The Library staff are always helpful and even dogged in their encouragement of research. On a personal note, I will always treasure one research experience when I had, by chance, mentioned a long-term idea to the Assistant Librarian, Sophie Evans. Later that day she handed me several books carefully marked where I might see some initial sources for later research. Yes, several years later I completed that research and printed that story.

Collection of Wild Apple Press pamphlets. All type is handset and printed letterpress by Jim Wilder in his print shop in Bethesda, Maryland, USA.

It is my goal, with the help of the RIA Library, to remain a serious student of the history of Irish printing. As you can imagine, it is easy to be grateful for the Library, for its materials and especially its staff.

Jim Wilder
Bethesda, Maryland, USA

With Appreciation to the Library of the Royal Irish Academy.

This month marks 250 years since the publication in Paris of Focalóir Gaoidhilge-Sax-Bhéarla, an Irish-English Dictionary compiled by Bishop John O’Brien of Cloyne and Ross (d.1769).

Charles O’Connor’s annotated copy of Focalóir Gaoidhilge-Sax-Bhéarla (Paris, 1768)

Bishop John O’Brien was a well-travelled priest before he was appointed to his first Irish parish, Castlelyons and Rathcormac in 1738. He received his formal education in the Irish seminary in Toulouse, from where he graduated in 1733 as Bachelor of Divinity, and he subsequently became tutor to several eminent Irish families in continental Europe, most notably that of Col. Arthur Dillon, commander of the Dillon regiment in the French army and later Stuart ambassador to the French court. Upon O’Brien’s return to Ireland as a parish priest in his native Cork, we begin to witness his engagement with the Irish language which was the native tongue, of course, of his congregation in that area; we have three sermons he penned in 1739-40 on mortal sin, on the Gospel, and on the Passion respectively. This evident understanding of the need to preach to the populace in their vernacular is an early clue as to his motivation for producing the dictionary, for in his appeal for funding for its publication, he made the case to the authorities in Rome that it would be primarily of use to priests who were ministering to the Irish-speaking faithful.

In addition, O’Brien, like many clerics throughout Ireland at that time, was a generous and appreciative supporter of native learning and poetry, and his appointment as Bishop of Cloyne and Ross in 1748 occasioned celebratory poems from several Cork poets active at the time. Seán na Ráithíneach Ó Murchú (1700-62) welcomed the appointment with a flamboyance typical of the genre:

‘tá suairceas labhartha is aiteas ag dáimh gan chiach
i gCluain ó gairmeadh Easpog de Sheán Ó Briain.’

‘full-throated joy, acclaim and cheer abound
in Cloyne since John O’Brien was made Bishop.’

O’Brien maintained close ties with two Gaelic scholar-scribes in particular, namely Mícheál Ó Longáin and Seán Ó Conaire (he employed the former between 1759 and 1762), and these are undoubtedly the ‘persons learned in the language and antiquities of Ireland’ mentioned by O’Brien in his introductory remarks in the dictionary as his assistants in that particular endeavour. Both brought with them a considerable knowledge of the manuscript sources from which they drew a headword list for the Focalóir. This augmented the word-list compiled around 1700 by Edward Lhuyd which served as the basis of the new dictionary. Together the three made a formidable team of historian-lexicographers and their finished work was a staple resource for Irish scholars for a century after its appearance.

O’Brien’s remarks on the letter H from Focalóir Gaoidhilge-Sax-Bhéarla (Paris, 1768)

There are many storied copies of the Focalóir Gaoidhilge-Sax-Bhéarla in various libraries and the Academy Library holds three copies, two of which show the value placed on it by eighteenth- and nineteenth-century Gaelic scholars.[i] One is a copy owned by the renowned scholar Charles O’Conor MRIA (1710-91) and contains extensive handwritten annotations and notes by him. Another of the three is one that was owned by the Gaelic scribe James Stanton (fl. 1800) and which later passed into the hands of one Thomas Brosnan who sold it to the celebrated scribe, poet and diarist Amhlaoibh Ó Súilleabháin (1783-1836) of Callan, Co. Kilkenny. This copy, with the plentiful annotations and supplementary entries made by Ó Súilleabháin reflects in a very vivid way his particular vocabulary and his interests in contrast to those of the Bishop and his helpers. Ó Súilleabháin’s interjections contain everyday material related to agriculture, botany, and other country pursuits which would have been outside the ambit of O’Brien’s work, his chief sources in compiling the Dictionary being written texts, rather than the current speech of the people. Examples of Ó Súilleabháin’s additions are the entries ‘CIRCÍM, a mixture of butter and boiled eggs’; ‘CROTAL, what remains of the apples after the cyder is squeezed out’; ‘GRINNIAL, the sandy bottom under the ploughed sod’ and ‘SEASGACH, a cow having no milk’. Plant names entered include ‘BEARNÁN, dandelion’; ‘BEARNÁN BÉILTINNE, marsh-marigold’, and several plants of the pea family including the ‘PÓNAIRE FHRANCACH, French bean’, ‘PÓNAIRE CHAPAILL’ and ‘PÓNAIRE CHURRAIGH’ which are both glossed as ‘Marsh Trefoil’. Also perceived worthy of inclusion by Ó Súilleabháin is the compound noun ‘CRUINNTSEILE’ which he translates as: ‘a congregated spit; what comes from the lungs by expectoration’!

Ó Súilleabháin also feels the need at times to elaborate on O’Brien’s original definitions, especially where he feels local knowledge brings something valuable to bear. At O’Brien’s entry for Ó Súilleabháin’s home district he gives an update (in italics below):

CALLAIN, a town and territory in the county of Kilkenny, which anciently belonged to the O Glohernys, and a tribe of the Céalys. The 1st are totally extinct the 2nd of no account…

As seen below, where O’Brien has ‘TOICE, an opprobrious name given to a young woman of bad behaviour’, Ó Súillleabháin, while he acknowledges that it appears with that meaning in Merriman’s Cúirt an Mheadhon-Oidhche/Midnight Court, notices a nuance of dialect and feels the need to add the clarification ‘in Kerry opprobrious, in Kilkenny any girl.’ The later Irish lexicographer Dinneen is in agreement with Ó Súilleabháin, as he instructs us the word ‘toice’ can be ‘either affectionate or contemptuous’.[ii]

O’Brien’s dictionary was only superseded by the advent of more modern, informed techniques in philology and lexicography in the mid-nineteenth century, with the birth of the modern discipline of Celtic studies. His work is remarkable, however, for its professional engagement with Gaelic sources and the undoubted knowledge and skill which John O’Brien and his helpers brought to the task of their interpretation.

A talented artist and antiquary, born in Dublin, Margaret McNair Stokes lived in the city most of her life. The family had a large Georgian house at 5 Merrion Square, and Margaret was educated at home. She studied art and antiquities under the influence of her father, William Stokes, MD, MRIA (1804-78), and his friends. She maintained close contact throughout her life with her older brother, Whitley Stokes, MRIA (1830-1909), a Celtic scholar and legal administrator.

The family had a longstanding association with the Royal Irish Academy, and the scholarly circle in which Margaret worked in her early career included George Petrie, MRIA, Samuel Ferguson, MRIA, J. H. Todd, MRIA, and Edwin Wyndham Quin, earl of Dunraven, MRIA. She edited and illustrated some of their publications on Irish antiquities, architecture and manuscript heritage. Among her best known artistic achievements are the illustrations she provided for Samuel Ferguson’s The Cromlech on Howth: a poem (London, 1861). The book includes her intricate reworking of images from the Book of Kells, along with watercolours depicting scenes from Howth and Clontarf on the north Dublin coast.

Margaret Stokes’ artistic talent emerged clearly in her illustrations for Samuel Ferguson’s Cromlech of Howth (London, 1861).

The Cromlech on Howth: a poem / by Samuel Ferguson (London, 1861), plate 4.

By the time she came to publish her research under her own name, Margaret was an informed and experienced editor, photographer, and illustrator. Two books based on her research, Early Christian architecture in Ireland (1878) and Early Christian art in Ireland (1887), include many of her accomplished drawings. Her Early Christian art was regularly reprinted well into the twentieth century and helped mould artistic perceptions of Irish heritage in the newly independent Ireland.

Her High crosses of Castledermot and Durrow (1898) combines photography and original artwork in her pursuit of visual accuracy. Margaret Stokes had a very clear view of how her illustrations of high crosses were to be presented, using her technique of photography and art combined. Then, as now, producing high-quality images of such monuments in the landscape required skill and patience. In her communications with the RIA publications committee, she insisted that the illustrations of medieval high crosses she had personally prepared were integral to her work and could not be replaced by alternative photographs of the same objects.

‘Everyone who has experience of photography in the case of half obliterated bas-reliefs or inscriptions, will support me in saying that the result depends on the season, the day, the hour and the aspect of the skies. … my paintings are worked on a certain foundation – that foundation being a platinotype print from a certain negative. The faintest indications of design discoverable in this negative are brought out by my brush. In a different negative the design may be wholly misrepresented – or obliterated if taken under a different aspect of sunlight. … the primary object of my work is not the same as the photographer’s. The method which I have found by experience to be the best to follow for my purpose is to make rubbings in the first instance so as to be sure of what the pattern or design really is which may look so different or so incomprehensible either to the naked eye or in a photograph taken under ordinary conditions of light. But, having once secured, through means of the rubbing, the true nature of the design, then to watch for the moment when the sun illumines the sculpture so that the edges of the half-effaced outline revealed first in the rubbing, come out in agreement with it.’ (RIA, MS 12 L 36)

Castledermot South Cross (west face) from High crosses of Castledermot and Durrow (1898)

In 1876, Margaret Stokes became the first woman born in Ireland to be elected an Honorary Member of the Royal Irish Academy, and she included reference to this on the title page of her later books. (Her father, William, and both her brothers, Whitley and William, were already full members, but women were not eligible for full Academy membership.)

Constantly interested in new experiences, she wrote two books drawing on her continental travels late in her life: Six months on the Apennines (1892), and Three months in the forests of France (1895). In pursuing research on European architecture and sculpture at the sites of early Irish monasteries, she explained that she was attempting ‘to discover the reason for the development of certain styles in Ireland’. Rather than tracing the stories of medieval Irish monks, she was interested in the art and architecture they would have seen, believing them to have been important channels of influence between Ireland and Europe. Her interest in such associations extended to the folk customs of her own day, as in her visual analogies of funeral customs in both countries.

Three Months in the Forests of France, fig. 50 Funeral custom, Cong

She was also active in the Royal Society of Antiquaries of Ireland and in the County Kildare Archaeological Society. Her Academy obituary (Royal Irish Academy, Minutes of proceedings, 1901) noted ‘it will be hard to find again the same passionate devotion to the object of her study, and the same artistic excellence in the elaboration of her work’.

Bernadette Cunningham
Deputy Librarian

Main image: Margaret Stokes sketching the High Cross of Moone, Co. Kildare, photographed by Lord Walter Fitzgerald in July 1897. (Journal of the Co. Kildare Archaeological Society, Vol. 3, 1899-1902, p. 200)

Listen back to the Lunchtime Lecture by Dr Marie Bourke ‘Margaret Stokes (1832-1900): Antiquarian, Artist, Writer – Pioneer

Further reading:

Lord Walter Fitzgerald, ‘In memoriam. Margaret Stokes’, Journal of the County Kildare Archaeological Society, 3 (1899-1902), 201–5

Janette Stokes, ‘Margaret McNair Stokes’, Irish Arts Review, 9 (1993), 217–19

Jenifer Ní Ghrádaigh, ‘Authorship denied: Margaret Stokes, Rev. James Graves and the publication of Petrie’s Christian Inscriptions’, Journal of the Royal Society of Antiquaries of Ireland, 138 (2008), 136–46

Andrew O’Brien and Linde Lunney, ‘Stokes, Margaret McNair’, in Dictionary of Irish Biography (2009) (dib.cambridge.org)

Elizabeth Boyle, ‘Margaret Stokes (1832-1900) and the study of medieval Irish art in the nineteenth century’, in Ciara Breathnach, and Catherine Lawless (eds), Visual, material and print culture in nineteenth-century Ireland (Dublin: Four Courts, 2010), 73-84.

Philip McEvansoneya, ‘More light on Margaret Stokes and the publication of George Petrie’s Christian Inscriptions in the Irish Language’, Journal of the Royal Society of Antiquaries of Ireland, 141 (2011), 149–66

Peter Murray, ‘Margaret Stokes, Celtic connoisseur’, Irish Arts Review, 35:3 (2018), 126–9

This blog post is a contribution to 2018 Heritage Week, and to the European Year of Cultural Heritage.

The Royal Irish Academy library is known primarily for its holdings in written form – one thinks, for example, of its extensive collection of medieval and modern Irish language manuscripts. However, there also are examples of the spoken word to be found among the Academy’s acquisitions. The collection of over two hundred 12-inch shellac disks known as the Doegen records contains recordings of native Irish speakers from 17 counties made during the period 1928 to 1931. The items recorded are primarily folktales and songs. The collection takes its name from the man who carried out the recordings on behalf of the Irish government, Dr Wilhelm Doegen (1877-1967), who was Director of the Sound Department at the Prussian State Library, Berlin. During the first week of recordings, the head of the Irish government, W.T. Cosgrave, marked the occasion by recording a short speech of his own. Listen here.

The Doegen collection’s importance to the field of Irish dialectology is immense, not least because many of the dialects captured have become extinct in the intervening years. The recordings appeal to a broader audience also, as the spoken word has an immediacy that carries the listener back in time.

A HEA-funded project based at the Academy culminated in the official launch in 2013 of Doegen.ie, bringing the recordings online with transcriptions, translations, notes on the recordings and information on the speakers. Photographs were also included where available. The recent acquisition of some new images, courtesy of the National Folklore Collection, UCD, has occasioned the present blog post. Some of these images we can look at here.

The first is of Fionán Mac Coluim (1875-1966) of Spunkane, south Kerry, drawn in 1952 by Seán Ó Súilleabháin RHA. Unlike most of the informants recorded, who were generally small farmers and fishermen, Mac Coluim travelled extensively over the course of his life and worked in a variety of occupations. He recorded six childrens’ songs for Doegen:

Raghaidh, raghaidh Fionán Mac Coluim ; Gheobhair é Fionán Mac Coluim ; Tairse abhaile Fionán Mac Coluim ; Hóró damhas is damhas Fionán Mac Coluim ; An bóthar ó thuaidh Fionán Mac Coluim ; Beidh ríl againn Fionán Mac Coluim

Fionán Mac Coluim, drawing by Seán Ó Súilleabháin RHA (with the kind permission of the Irish Folklore Collection)

On the left in the next image is Mícheál Breathnach of Maum, county Galway, born in 1864. He is seen here with American folklorist Stith Thompson, co-author of The Types of the Folktale (Helsinki, 1961) author of the Motif-Index of Folk Literature (Indiana, 1955), and the ‘T’ of the ATU classification system used in folkloristics. The tale told by Breathnach over two tracks was given the title An scoláire bocht (‘The poor scholar’). It is an example of an international folktale classified as ATU 854 The golden ram: An scoláire bocht (cuid 1) Mícheál Breathnach ; An scoláire bocht (cuid 2) Mícheál Breathnach

Mícheál Breathnach (left) and Stith Thompson (with the kind permission of the National Folklore Collection, UCD)

The next image is of Pádraig Ó Súilleabháin, born in 1864 in Allintober, county Galway, where he spent most of his life. He recorded one track for the Doegen scheme, a story beginning Bhí bean fadó ann (‘There once was a woman’). It is a version of an international folktale classified as ATU 1358C Trickster discovers adultery: food goes to husband instead of lover: Bhí bean fadó Pádraig Ó Súilleabháin

Pádraig Ó Súilleabháin (with the kind permission of the National Folklore Collection, UCD)

Finally, we see here Seán Carún of Luogh, near Doolin, county Clare, born in 1858. He tells a story entitled Rí na Coille Glaise agus mac rí in Éirinn (‘The king of Kyleglass and a king’s son in Ireland’). It is a version of one of the most popular folktales of all, ATU 300 The dragon slayer. The recording time available on the disk (around 4 minutes) was not sufficient for Carún to complete his story and it remains unfinished on the track. Nevertheless, it is a fine example of Clare Irish, albeit quickly spoken! Rí na Coille Glaise agus mac rí in Éirinn Seán Carún

Seán Carún (with the kind permission of the National Folklore Collection, UCD)

The Doegen Project has benefited from contact from time to time from speakers’ great-grandchildren and other family members, many who have left Ireland, and who have valued hearing these voices from the past. The project team would love to add further images to the website and would welcome any help from members of the public. Please feel free to get in touch.

Eoghan Ó Raghallaigh,
Roinn na Nua-Ghaeilge,
Maynooth University

In January 1838, a few days after her seventieth birthday, the celebrated writer, Maria Edgeworth, received a letter[1] from Ireland’s pre-eminent scientist, Sir William Rowan Hamilton, then thirty-two. Hamilton, recently elected President of the Royal Irish Academy, was not sending birthday greetings; rather, he was looking to Miss Edgeworth for advice on an Academy matter – improving the position of literature in the Academy where it languished in comparison to other fields of study. Edgeworth’s advice would inform his inaugural address to the Academy later that month.

Left: Extract of a letter from William Rowan Hamilton to Maria Edgeworth, 3 Jan 1838 (MS 24 F 23/1 (1))
Right: Castle Rackrent was hugely popular and its style and themes influenced other writers including Sir Walter Scott’.

Hamilton carefully couched his approach to Maria in the context of her Academy connection via her late father, Richard Lovell Edgeworth (1744-1817), scientist and founder member, and friend and correspondent of scientists throughout Europe. Furthermore, Hamilton acknowledged her eminence as a literary figure ―

‘it is known to all the world that you are not only a lover of literature, but a successful pursuer and powerful promoter of it, and that on any point connected therewith, your opinion must be most valuable’

Extract of a letter from William Rowan Hamilton to Maria Edgeworth, 3 Jan 1838 (MS 24 F 23/1 (2))

The letter was not a ‘cold call’. Maria was well known and respected in the world of science from the early days when she had travelled widely with her father and met the greatest scientific minds of the age. Respected as much for her educational publications and opinions, she maintained a lively correspondence with both literati and scientists and continued to meet many of them in London or Paris or at the family home in Edgeworthstown. Hamilton had met Maria there in 1824. She summed up the nineteen-year old Trinity student then: ‘he has both the simplicity and the candour which make true genius’[2]. Respect was mutual and the two became firm friends.

Maria’s confidential advice was considered —

• medals should be awarded to the winners of prize essay competitions,

• members’ subscriptions for Academy events should be at affordable levels to permit attendance by the men of literature who were not usually well off.

With the voice of experience of the almost exclusively male world of science and learning, Maria advised Hamilton in his role as President to-

‘speak less than others – and hold the balance’.

Letter from Maria Edgeworth to William Rowan Hamilton, 6 Jan 1838 (MS 24 F 23/2 (5))

More controversially, she advised that ladies might be admitted to Academy meetings. Hamilton’s lengthy response (of which a draft and final version are held) dealt forensically with the advice offered, postponing the matter of admitting the ladies until he could no longer avoid the issue.

Women’s attendance at meetings would not work, he argued, for reasons of lack of space and because administration of Academy business would oblige visitors to withdraw and ‘it would be hard to ask ladies to do so’. Is it too fanciful to imagine Hamilton blushing as he wrote this? His tone suggests that he is trying to convince himself. He was a rational man of science with an inclusive view of the role of literature and the humanities — his engagement with Maria Edgeworth’s suggestions is considered, but his response to the question of women is uncharacteristically weak.

Miss Edgeworth’s proposal was a bridge too far for a conservative society. The time was out of joint. Hamilton was ‘holding the balance’ in an institution of which he had the measure. Writing to a woman for confidential advice was one thing, proposing the participation of women was quite another.

Portrait of Maria Edgeworth. Image © National Gallery of Ireland

Maria Edgeworth was elected an honorary member of the Academy in 1842, the fourth woman to be so honoured. She died in 1849. Hamilton resigned as president in 1846[3].

A hundred years, universal suffrage and the declaration of the republic would all pass before the Academy elected women to full membership — in March 1949[4].

Siobhán Fitzpatrick,
Librarian to the Academy.

Maria Edgeworth featured in our exhibition on the first five honorary women academicians ‘Prodigies of learning’: Academy women in the nineteenth century.

Caroline Herschel was the first professional female astronomer; she discovered eight comets, over a dozen nebulae, was the first woman to be awarded a Gold Medal by the Royal Astronomical Society and a Gold Medal for Science from the King of Prussia. She has a comet and a moon crater named after her. Yet, her early life was on a very different trajectory.

Herschel was born into a working class musical family in Hanover in 1750. Whilst her father, Isaac, was keen to educate all his children, her mother, Anna, believed her daughter’s place was in the home. She was expected to be the family’s housemaid, taking care of all the domestic chores. Isaac, to the chagrin of his wife, gave Caroline music lessons and encouraged her to improve herself with a little education.

In 1772, Caroline’s older brother William, by now a musician in Bath, persuaded their mother to allow his sister to join him and train as a singer in England. She took singing and dancing lessons while her brother taught her English. Caroline was clearly talented and went on to perform as a star soprano in Bath and Bristol up to five nights a week. Despite this success and her busy schedule, she continued to look after the household chores.

Caroline’s singing career was cut short when William’s attention turned to the study of astronomy. William had been interested in astronomy since he was a young man, now this interest was turning into an obsession and he expected his sister to follow suit. Her career changed course from star of the music scene to star gazer. In the Spring of 1772 he bought a copy of James Ferguson’s Astronomy and started buying the components needed to build a telescope. For years William and Caroline busied themselves with the construction of telescopes, hours were spent polishing mirrors.

William Herschel’s 40 foot telescope at Slough. From: Memoir and correspondence of Caroline Herschel (London, 1879)

William taught Caroline mathematics and science. Even in the dead of winter, when the ‘very ink was frozen in the bottle,’[i] she was at William’s side taking observational notes as he worked at the telescope. With her help, William discovered the planet Uranus in 1781, a discovery that led to him becoming court astronomer to King George III. As his assistant, Caroline benefited from a royal pension, £50 per year, allowing her financial independence and making her the first professional female astronomer. The siblings were now truly professional astronomers and moved to Datchet, near Windsor Castle, in August 1782, close to the royal family.

Caroline Herschel recording her brother William’s observations on the night he discovered the planet Uranus. From: Astronomie populaire: description générale du ciels / Camille Flammarion (Paris, 1890)

By the following year William had built a telescope for Caroline especially designed to discover comets. With her own telescope, Caroline made independent searches of the skies and became well respected in astronomy. As well as her many discoveries of comets, nebulae and clusters, Caroline updated John Flamsteed’s vast Catalogue of stars, adding 560 stars not previously catalogued.

“I found I was to be trained for an assistant-astronomer, and by way of encouragement a telescope adapted for “sweeping,” consisting of a tube with two glasses, such as are commonly used in a “finder,” was given me. I was “to sweep for comets,” and I see by my journal that I began August 22nd, 1782, to write down and describe all remarkable appearances I saw in my “sweeps,” which were horizontal. But it was not till the last two months of the same year that I felt the least encouragement to spend the star-light nights on a grass-plot covered with dew or hoar frost, without a human being near enough to be within call.” [ii]

Draper Hill Collection, The Ohio State University, Billy Ireland Cartoon Library & Museum

William died in August 1822 and Caroline returned to Hanover. Back in Germany Caroline no longer searched the skies but continued to contribute extensively to the field of astronomy. Her nephew, John, followed in his father’s footsteps and Caroline dedicated much of her time to assisting him in his astronomical work. In 1828 Caroline was awarded the Gold medal of the Astronomical Society for her work on the revision and re-arranging of William’s Catalogue of Nebulae and Clusters of Stars. She was eventually made an Honorary Member of the Royal Astronomical Society in 1835. In 1838, she was made an Honorary Member of the Royal Irish Academy. Her nephew, John, informed her of the honour and the modesty of her reply rings out.

Hanover, Dec. 17, 1838.
My dear Nephew,—
First and foremost let me dispatch what may be called business. In the first place, I thank you for your kind letter and communication of having so great an honour conferred on me as to be admitted an honorary member of the Royal Irish Academy. I cannot help crying out aloud to myself, every now and then, What is THAT for? …[iii]

Caroline Lucretia Herschel died in Hanover in 1848, aged ninety-seven and was buried with a lock of her brother’s hair in her coffin.

Portrait of Caroline Herschel. From: Memoir and correspondence of Caroline Herschel (London, 1879)

Caroline Herschel was one of the women featured in our exhibition ‘Prodigies of learning: Academy women in the nineteenth century’

Sophie Evans
Assistant Librarian