Born: 23 October 1886, United Kingdom
Died: 25 March 1952
Country most active: Ireland, United Kingdom, International
Also known as: Selma Sigerson
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.
Coyle, Kathleen (1886–1952), novelist, was born 23 October 1886 in Derry, the eldest child of John Coyle and Catherine Coyle (née McKenna); they had a son and two other daughters. Her mother, who was born in New York and brought up in Ireland, was proud of her Irish ancestry. Although her family had been well off, in her autobiography Coyle described their fortunes as being very much on the decline, as her father, who had no occupation, squandered his wife’s family inheritance. His alcoholism and early death, along with a childhood accident which had left her with a permanent limp, blighted her early years. Educated privately at home, she briefly attended a local convent and for three weeks went to the Young Ladies’ Academy in Derry, but was removed as her mother was unable to afford the school fees. As a child she was a voracious reader. Her mother sold the family home in Glendermott and they moved to Liverpool in 1906, where Kathleen worked in a library. In 1909 they moved to London, and, in an attempt to reduce the family’s hardship, she began work in a newspaper office. It was in London that she met Rebecca West (Cicely Andrews), who was ‘impressed and almost alarmed by her endowment of poetic sensitivity’ (Preface to Liv, p. ix).
Despite her mother’s opposition, Kathleen returned to Ireland in 1911, and on moving to Dublin became involved in the socialist movement. As Selma Sigerson, she wrote with James Connolly a pamphlet published as Sinn Fein and socialism in 1919. Through the Dublin socialist movement she met her husband, Charles O’Meagher. They married in 1915 and had a son and a daughter. Following their separation some four years later, she returned with her children to London, and lived once again with her mother, who was unsympathetic to her situation. During this time she became active in suffragist circles. With a view to becoming a writer she placed her children in foster care, rented a room, and in 1923 published her first book, Piccadilly. In that year she moved to Ostend with her children. She later lived in Antwerp before moving in Paris in 1926, where she met James Joyce and Nora Barnacle. In the years that followed she produced a regular output of novels, most of which she regarded very critically. According to her own accounts they were written primarily to earn money, though she singled out the well received A flock of birds (1930) as having some literary merit; set in Ireland during the war of independence, it was entered by Jonathan Cape for a literary prize and came second only to E. M. Forster’s A passage to India. Critics have also praised Liv (1928) and her autobiography, The magical realm (1943).
Although her output was prolific, she was often short of money, and, with financial assistance from American friends, she left Europe for the United States in 1937. With her daughter Michele, a practising artist, she lived in New Hampshire, where she joined an artists’ group known as the MacDowell Colony. Throughout the second world war she wrote short stories for women’s magazines. She later moved to Princeton, where she engaged in historical research on Joan of Arc and St Paul. She also began a study of the poet Rimbaud, the manuscript of which is now lost, and reviewed books for the press. She moved to Philadelphia in 1951 and died there on 25 March 1952. Her work attracted renewed interest in the late twentieth century.