Dorothea Herbert, writer, poet and diarist from Carrick on Suir who has been compared to Jane Austen, died on this day in 1829.
Herbert’s most famous work, ‘Retrospections of an outcast’was published posthumously in 1929 with a new edition appearing in 1988. The book,based on Dorothea’s journals, sheds light on the role of women and domestic life in rural Ireland in the late 1700s. Scandalous affairs, romantic liaisons,fashion reports, crazy practical jokes and shocking stories of domestic violence against women in the upper classes are all there in her writings.Virginia Woolf is said to have found them ‘randy and rollicking’.
According to Dr Jane Maxwell of Trinity College Dublin, “this memoir is a gold mine as women's records from this period are very rare. Not only does it provide details about what it was like to live in a rackety family home in the eighteenth century, but it also gives insight into unrecorded aspects of private life. For example, children are very often absent from historical records so Herbert's description of her childhood games is marvellous to read. The children were usually unsupervised and their gamesranged from the educational (playing at being Robinson Crusoe) to the downright dangerous – the Herbert boys tried to set their music teacher alight.”
In 2023, Angie Mezzetti presented and produced a radio documentary for RTE Lyric FM entitled ‘Dorothea The Doozy’. In the documentary,Mezzetti says of Herbert’s anecdotes: “Some are comical, others distressing and sad. What is striking is how violence, specifically domestic violence against women, was commonplace at all levels of society in the late 1700s/early 1800s,”
Dr Mary Breen of UCC, who wrote her doctoral thesis on Herbert, talks about her gifted literary style and how it is obvious that she was widely read. She particularly loves the way that Herbert writes about food,the Paris fashions and social interactions and the various marriages and break-ups of marriages.
The original illustrated manuscript is kept in the library at Trinity. The manuscript is written in Dorothea’s handwriting and illustrated with her own water-colour drawings.
Sources:
https://www.tipperarylive.ie/news/local-news/1045277/radio-documentary-about-tipperary-writer-dorothea-herbert-is-available-to-listen-to-on-podcast.html
https://www.rte.ie/culture/2023/0215/1356843-meet-dorothea-the-doozy-the-lyric-feature/
https://www.dib.ie/biography/herbert-dorothea-a3954
https://www.tcd.ie/library/exhibitions/directors-choice/outcast/
