PREFACE
These articles on "Notable Irishwomen" originally appeared serially, and attracted so much attention that it has been considered advisable to reproduce them in a complete form.
The list is by no means an exhaustive one: many notable lives still remain to be chronicled, more especially those of Margaret Stokes, the well known writer on antiquarian subjects, Mrs. Hungerford and Mrs. Alexander (Hector), the popular novelists, Augusta Holmes, the musician and composer, and "Ethna Carbery," that sweet Irish singer, whose loss we still deplore. But the lives that are given in this volume will abundantly show that during the transition period from the middle of the eighteenth to almost the end of the nineteenth century. Irishwomen have exercised a potent and, on the whole, a beneficent influence on society, on the stage, on the concert-room, as well as on the peaceful realms of literature.
It may be well to add that this book is not
