Born: 10 May 1845 or 1848, Ireland
Died: 6 April 1894
Country most active: Ireland, United Kingdom
Also known as: E. Owens Blackburne
This biography is republished from The Dictionary of Irish Biography and was written by Helen Andrews. Shared by permission in line with Creative Commons ‘Attribution’ (CC BY) licencing.
Casey, Elizabeth Owens Blackburne (1845?–94), author (as ‘E. Owens Blackburne ’), was born 10 May 1845/8 in Slane, Co. Meath, daughter of Andrew Casey and his wife (née Mills), and great‑granddaughter of Richard Blackburne of Mulladillon House, Co. Meath. She lost her sight as a child and recovered it several years later after an operation by Sir William Wilde, which enabled her to study; she became one of the first candidates to sit for the senior examination for women (1871, 1872) at TCD, but is not recorded as having passed.
She began her literary career by publishing a long poem in Zozimus, an illustrated humorous weekly published in Dublin (1871–2); ‘In at the death’, serialised in the Nation, was later published as A woman scorned (1876). Around 1873 she settled in London as a journalist, contributing to many newspapers and periodicals. She wrote about twenty novels. Described as ‘clever’ (Athenaeum, 6 July 1894), her skilfully contrived plots produced entertaining stories. A recurrent theme explores the difficulties of women in a male-dominated society, as in The way women love (1877) and Molly Carew (1879), which is partly autobiographical and describes a young Irish writer seeking work in London. Several of her novels are based in Ireland and explore life in upper-class households, as in The glen of silver birches (1880) and The heart of Erin: an Irish story of today (1883), while lively and humorous scenes of peasant life are portrayed in A bunch of shamrocks, being a collection of Irish tales and sketches (1879). She also wrote narrative verse for elocution and moral tales for children.
In 1877 she published the first collection of memoirs of Irishwomen, Illustrious Irishwomen . . . from the earliest ages to the present century, claiming in the preface that ‘to preserve the names and achievements of the more gifted daughters of Erin had been the silent patriotism of my life’. Making extensive use of private papers, she included women from a variety of political and religious backgrounds, beginning with ‘Queen Macha 3603 AM’, whom she described as the first Irish queen with an authentic record. Her work stimulated others to write about Irish women. Her fiancé, a Dublin doctor, died just before their planned wedding, and she never married. She received assistance from the royal bounty fund but, impoverished, she returned to Ireland and cared for her widowed mother at Sallypark, Fairview, Co. Dublin, where she died 6 April 1894 in a fire; survived by her mother, she was buried in Drumcondra cemetery, Co. Dublin.