Novelist Mary Anne Sadlier – ‘Something to write home about’
Jonathan Smyth's latest Times Past column remembers novelist, Mary Anne Sadlier, from Cootehill.
As Cootehill gears up for its 300th anniversary celebrations it seems timely to remember one of the town’s most prolific daughters. In 2006, Marjorie Elizabeth Howes, Associate Professor of English and Irish Studies at Boston College, Massachusetts, writing in Colonial Crossings: Figures in Irish Literary History, described Mary Anne Sadlier as ‘the most popular and influential Irish American writer’ of her time.
Indeed, she was a woman who excelled in a career that exemplified the start of the transition from the traditional role of Irish women to that of the modern-day form. Addressing the Breifne Historical Society in 1997, Patricia Smyth stated that Sadlier’s prolific output of writings covering a span of 60 years, are now regarded as a much more complicated body of literature of ‘prime sociological insight’ into the Irish Emigrant Situation in America during the 19th century. Her body of work consists of novels, short stories, poems, plays, children’s texts, and translations of French and German religious works.
She was born, Mary Anne Madden, in Cootehill Town, on December 31, 1820. She lived in an age contemporary to Florence Nightingale and the Bronte sisters. Mary Anne was the daughter of Francis Madden and Mary Madden (nee Foy), Church Street. One account described the Madden homestead as ‘a small, pokey, thatched building’.
Mary Anne was one of six children. Her father, a successful businessman, would later fall on tough times, and its toll on his health may have caused his premature death in 1844. Cootehill was the second principal town in County Cavan, widely known for its prosperous flax industry.
Mary Anne’s mother was Foy from Bunnoe whose relations proudly contributed many priests to the Diocese. The Foys’ flour mill at Bunnoe was still in use until the early 1990s. As a child, Mary Anne listened to her mother repeat old legends, songs, and poems as she sat by her knee. These stories nurtured the girl’s vivid imagination, and she grew up with a great love of her country, the Irish culture, and the Catholic Church. However, her mother died when she was young, leaving Francis to rear the family alone.
Never-the-less, Mary Anne received a good education. Her father engaged the teaching services of a local school run by a Presbyterian Minister on the Cavan Road. The Reverend and his wife were impressed by Mary Anne’s ‘bright and lively intellect’ and did everything in their power to help the child reach her full potential, allowing her full access to the Minister’s extensive library.
These books, no doubt nourished Mary Anne’s literary tastes and her emerging writing talent. At the age of 18 years, she had her first work published in a fashionable London magazine, La Belle Assemblé, a highly popular women’s magazine. The editors were so impressed by her poetry that they expressed a strong ‘wish to meet the young poetess, should they themselves visit Ireland, or she London.’
Before his death, Francis had planned to send his daughter to an Ursuline convent. Just before the Great Famine, fate took Mary Anne in a different direction and, in August 1844, in the company of a younger brother, she left Cootehill and sailed for Canada. One theory suggests that Mary Anne went into domestic service in Montreal before taking a teaching job in a Ladies School, which gave her access to a ‘very exclusive circle’.’Soon her articles appeared in the pages of the New York Freeman’s Journal and her first book called ‘Tales of Olden Times’ was published in 1845.
The preface relates a humble message that she produced the book ‘because of financial necessity… had it been my fate to belong to that fortunate class, which is happily exempt from the necessity of working, I should never have presented myself before you.’In the same year, she met the love of her life James Sadlier of the publishing firm D.& J. Sadlier. The Pilot newspaper in one of its columns noted that ‘naturally she sought literary labour’, becoming ‘acquainted with Mr James Sadlier, the Montreal representative of the New York firm of D. & J. Sadlier, the well-known publishers’, established on Carmine Street, in New York. The company is to this day one of America’s largest Catholic publishing firms and its founders, the Sadlier brothers, James, and Denis, were originally from Co Tipperary.
In 1846 she became James Sadlier’s wife. What better way to begin your literary career than to marry a publisher! Mary Anne and James’s marriage was a happy one and they had two sons and four daughters. The husband and wife team ‘proved to be a remarkable and close partnership in the field of publishing’. They lived for 14 years in Montreal where she authored novels that included ‘Elinor Preston’ and ‘Willie Burke’.
The lack of personal letters and autobiographical material about Mary Anne Sadlier may have made her a lesser known figure than she should be. A lady who had known her very well, said that she had ‘a natural modesty that never sought self-advertisement and a natural love of retirement. She was winning and kindly in manner, gracious and dignified. In conversation with people of culture, she appeared at her best. She was rarely gifted as to personal appearance. Her exquisite delicate complexion retained its tints almost to the last, and her blue eyes kept their brightness. Only her dark hair turned white.’
Convent of Mercy
In a couple of weeks’ time, we will return to Mary Anne Sadlier as we look at the foundation of the Sisters of Mercy Order in Cootehill, and the part she played in helping to raise funds to pay for the building on the Station Road.
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