Frances Browne

Irish poet and novelist
those of a similar name

Frances Browne (16 January 1816 – 21 August 1879) was an Irish poet and novelist, best remembered for her collection of short stories for children, Granny's Wonderful Chair.

She was born at Stranorlar, in County Donegal, Ireland, the seventh child in a family of twelve children. She was blind as a consequence of an attack of smallpox when she was 18 months old. In her writings, she recounts how she learned by heart the lessons which her brothers and sisters said aloud every evening, and how she bribed them to read to her by doing their chores. She then worked hard at memorising all that she had heard. She composed her first poem, a version of "The Lord's Prayer", when she was seven years of age.

In 1841, Browne's first poems were published in the Irish Penny Journal and in the London Athenaeum. One included in the Irish Penny Journal was the lyric "Songs of Our Land", which can be found in anthologies of Irish patriotic verse. She published a complete volume of poems in 1844 and a second volume in 1847. The provincial newspapers, especially the Belfast based Northern Whig, reprinted many, and she became widely known as 'The Blind Poetess of Ulster'. In 1845, she made her first contribution to the popular magazine Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, for which she wrote for the next 25 years. The first story of hers published there, in March 1845, was "The Lost New Year's Gift", which tells of a poor dressmaker in London and exemplifies her story telling abilities. There is an analysis of some of her short stories in the 2008 Donegal Annual: "Frances Browne and the Legends of Ulster" by Raymond Blair. Blair also edited an anthology of her poems, short stories and essays: The Best of Frances Browne (Limavady: Rathmore Books, c. 2012). Browne's career is treated by Paul Marchbanks in Irish Women Writers: An A to Z Guide, edited by Alexander G. Gonzalez (Westport, Conn.: Greenwood; Oxford: Harcourt Education, 2006). Thomas McLean examines her longest poem, "The Star of Attéghéi", and its relationship to the war in Circassia in a 2012 monograph, The Other East and Nineteenth Century British Literature. A brief entry on Browne appears in the Dictionary of Irish Biography, published under the auspices of the Royal Irish Academy.