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Lady Sydney Morgan (1783–1859)
Passages from My Autobiography
London: Richard Bentley, 1859
NYPL, The Carl H. Pforzheimer Collection of Shelley and His Circle
The scarcity of respectable jobs for women made writing attractive: it could
be done anonymously and, if necessary, in private, from one’s own room.
For women who sought fame, the cachet of authorship was considerable, and the
rewards could be as well. The parlor of the Irish novelist and travel-writer
Lady Sydney Morgan, shown here in the frontispiece to her autobiography, was
the embodiment of authorial success.
