Brownies and Bogles

Louise Imogen Guiney is known for her lyrical, Old English-style poems that often recall the literary conventions of seventeenth-century English poetry. Informed by her religious faith, Guiney's works reflect her concern with the Catholic tradition in literature and often emphasize moral rectitude and heroic gallantry. Today Guiney is praised for her scholarship in both her poetry and in her numerous literary and historical studies. Guiney was born in Boston, the daughter of an Irish-Catholic immigrant who was a general in the Union Army during the Civil War. Critics frequently note the role of Guiney's father in establishing the ideal of chivalric heroism later presented in her poetry. Pursuing a liberal arts curriculum at the Elmhurst Academy in Providence, Rhode Island, Guiney graduated in 1879, two years after her father's death. Throughout most of the next two decades she resided with her mother and aunt in Boston and Auburndale, Massachusetts.