Born: 11 November 1806, United Kingdom
Died: 6 February 1876
Country most active: Ireland
Also known as: Henrietta Georgiana Marcia Lascelles Iremonger
This biography is republished from The Dictionary of Irish Biography and was written by Frances Clarke. Shared by permission in line with Creative Commons ‘Attribution’ (CC BY) licencing.
Chatterton, (Henrietta) Georgiana (1806–76), writer, was born 11 November 1806 at 24 Arlington Street, Piccadilly, London, the only child of the Rev. Lascelles Iremonger , prebendary of Winchester cathedral, and Harriet, sister of Admiral Lord Gambier. Educated primarily by a series of governesses and very briefly at a day school in Winchester, in August 1824 she married Sir William Chatterton of Castle Mahon, Co. Cork. They divided their time between periods of residence in Ireland, England, Italy, and Germany, mixing with the literary and social elite. In London she met, among others, Robert Browning, Charles Dickens, and Anna Jameson. Her diary records regular meetings with the duchess of Kent and Queen Victoria at Tunbridge Wells, as well as introductions to William Wordsworth and the playwright and poet Joanna Baillie (1762–1851).
Chatterton’s first publication, Aunt Dorothy’s tales (1837), appeared anonymously and was followed by her highly successful Rambles in the south of Ireland (1839), in which she sought to ‘remove some of the prejudices which render so many people afraid either to travel or reside in Ireland’. It provided a highly romanticised vision of Ireland and was sold out within weeks of publication. She subsequently produced some twenty-five publications, including travelogues, fiction, and poetry. She was a talented amateur artist as well as an accomplished musician who composed tunes for the harp.
When their income from Irish rents dropped in the aftermath of the great famine, in 1851 the Chattertons moved to Bloxworth, Dorset. Later they settled in Rolls Park, Essex, where Sir William died in 1855. In June 1859 Chatterton married the writer Edward Heneage Dering, twenty years her junior, who collaborated with her on some of her later fiction, such as Grey’s court (1865). Dering was received into the catholic church in 1865 by John Henry Newman. Chatterton seems to have experienced some doubt concerning her faith, but she converted to catholicism in 1875, shortly before her death 6 February 1876, at her home, Baddesley Clinton, Warwickshire. Her memoirs, edited and annotated by Dering, appeared posthumously in 1878.