Sydney, Lady Morgan, née Owenson, was an Irish novelist.
She was one of the most vivid and hotly discussed literary figures of her generation. She began her career with a precocious volume of poems. She collected Irish tunes, for which she composed the words, thus setting a fashion adopted with signal success by Thomas Moore. Her St. Clair (1804), a novel of ill-judged marriage, ill-starred love, and impassioned nature-worship, in which the influence of Johann Wolfgang von Goethe and Jean-Jacques Rousseau was apparent, at once attracted attention.


