Henrietta O'Neill

Henrietta O'Neill (1758 – September 1793) was an Irish poet.^[1]

The only daughter of Charles Boyle, Viscount Dungarvan,^[2] and his wife, the former Susannah Hoare,^[3] she was born Henrietta Boyle.^[1][4] Her father died in 1759 and her mother later married Thomas Brudenell-Bruce;^[4] her younger half-siblings included Charles Brudenell-Bruce, 1st Marquess of Ailesbury. She married John O'Neill in 1777, when he was an Irish MP.^[5]

Henrietta O'Neill was a friend of the English novelist and poet Charlotte Smith.^[1] She was also an amateur actor^[3] and painter.^{[6] [unreliable source?]} Her best known poems are "Ode to the Poppy"^[4] and "Written on Seeing her Two Sons at Play".^[7]

Her two children were:^[8]

• Charles O'Neill, 1st Earl O'Neill (1779-1841)
• John O'Neill, 3rd Viscount O'Neill (1780-1855)

O'Neill died in Portugal in 1793, while still in her thirties.^[9] Her husband outlived her, becoming a baron in 1793 and a viscount in 1795,^[5] but was killed during the Irish Rebellion of 1798 at the age of 58.^[10]

References

1. Blackburne, E Owens (1877). Illustrious Irishwomen. Vol. 2. pp. 70–72. Archived from the original on 18 December 2021. Retrieved 19 September 2020.
2. Rowton, Frederic (1856). The female poets of Great Britain, chronologically arranged. p. 163. Archived from the original on 18 December 2021. Retrieved 19 September 2020.
3. Macdonald, D L; McWhir, Anne (2010). The Broadview Anthology of Literature of the Revolutionary Period 1770-1832. Broadview Press. p. 358. ISBN 978-1551110516. Archived from the original on 18 December 2021. Retrieved 19 September 2020.
4. Lonsdale, Roger (1990). Eighteenth Century Women Poets: An Oxford Anthology. Oxford University Press. p. 457. ISBN 0192827758. Archived from the original on 18 December 2021. Retrieved 25 May 2019.
5. The Peerage of England, Scotland, and Ireland: The peerage of Ireland. 1790. p. 25. Archived from the original on 18 December 2021. Retrieved 19 September 2020.
6. "[image] Trompe l'oeil of the Madonna and Child (after Raphael) and the Two Testaments". commons.wikimedia.org. Archived from the original on 18 December 2021. Retrieved 4 September 2020.
7. Andrew Carpenter (1998). Verse in English from Eighteenth-century Ireland. Cork University Press. p. 475. ISBN 978-1-85918-104-1. Archived from the original on 18 December 2021. Retrieved 25 May 2019.
8. Mosley, Charles, editor. Burke's Peerage, Baronetage & Knightage, 107th edition, 3 volumes. Wilmington, Delaware, U.S.A.: Burke's Peerage (Genealogical Books) Ltd, 2003.
9. Cave, Edward (1833). The Gentleman's Magazine. pp. 130–32. Archived from the original on 18 December 2021. Retrieved 19 September 2020.
10. John Debrett (1816). The Peerage of the United Kingdom of Great Britain & Ireland. F.C. and J. Rivington. p. 876. Archived from the original on 18 December 2021. Retrieved 26 May 2019.