Hemans

Hemans, Felicia Dorothea (1793-1835), a writer of English verse, was the daughter of a Liverpool merchant named George Browne. She was brought up at Gwrych, North Wales, and a quarto volume of her poems was published when she was fourteen. Shelley wished to correspond with her, but her parents refused to allow him, and three years after the publication of her Domestic Affections (1812) she married Captain Hemans. They had five children, but in 1818 a separation took place. Next year she published Translations from Camocns and other Poets, which was followed by The Sceptic (1820), a prize poem on Dartmoor, Welsh Melodies (1822), and The Vespers of Palermo, a tragedy produced without success at Covent Garden in 1823. In 1825 appeared Lays of Many Lands and The Forest Sanctuary, in the second edition of which (1829) Casabianca was included.

In 1829 she went to Scotland and made the acquaintance of Sir Walter Scott, and in the same year met Wordsworth during a visit to the Lakes.

Her last four years were spent in Dublin, where she knew Whately and Blanco White. Her Hymns for Childhood were first published in America, where her works were very popular. A memoir of Mrs.

Hemans by her sister, Mrs. Hughes, was prefixed to the first collected edition of her works.