Holmes, Mary Anne (Maryanne) (1773–1805), poet and writer, was born 10 October 1773 in Dublin, one of the four surviving children of Dr Robert Emmet (qv), state physician of Ireland, and Elizabeth (Mason) Emmet of Ballydowney, Co. Kerry. She was a highly intelligent young woman and an accomplished classical scholar. Her father took pride in her ‘good character’ and was confident she would make a future husband happy (Geoghegan, 63). However, like her brothers Robert Emmet (qv) and Thomas Addis Emmet (qv), she had a keen interest in politics and became a respected member of the liberal intellectual circles that included Lord and Lady Granard and the Moiras. She corresponded with Margaret King (qv), Lady Mount Cashell, on their common interest in the legacy of Mary Wollstonecraft, and may have met her widower William Godwin. She also contributed verse and prose to the United Irish organ the Press, and in 1799 was active in the extended family circle at Milltown which was opposed to the imminent legislative union. It was thought she wrote the anti-union pamphlet, An address to the people of Ireland, showing them why they ought to submit to an Union (1799), but this is now generally attributed to Roger O'Connor (qv). Dr William Drennan (qv) was a family friend, and described Mary Anne in 1793 as genteel but distant. He seems to have found her attractive and predicted her match with the radical barrister Robert Holmes (qv).
The couple were secretly married in September 1799. They had at least four children, including Elizabeth, later Elizabeth Lenox Conyngham (qv), and Drennan attended at the births. For a time Robert Holmes was legally responsible for the Emmet family affairs, and he and Mary Anne lived with her parents at their home at Casino, near Milltown, Co. Dublin. When Thomas Addis was sent to Fort George, she helped to bring up his children, who remained in Ireland. Mrs Emmet's letters to Thomas Addis, while referring to Mary Anne's devotion to her husband, also indicate she was prone to low spirits and delicate health. As the only one of their seventeen offspring to have survived and remained in Ireland, Mary Anne was a comfort to her aging parents, who could not bear to have her out of their sight. In quick succession she lost her father, in 1802, and then her mother, who died almost at the same time as her brother Robert was arrested and executed after the failed insurrection of July 1803. It is claimed she attempted in vain to have Robert's body restored to her, with the help of the Rev. Thomas Gamble (1739?–1831).
Her husband Robert was arrested almost immediately after the insurrection, but Mary Anne was allowed to spend part of the week with him. Legend long had it that she collapsed and died on her doorstep when he was released in February 1804. In fact within a few days she gave birth to a son at home, but after that her health rapidly deteriorated and her early deafness worsened. Drennan attended her regularly and in December feared her rapid decline due to consumption. She died 10 March 1805 and was buried alongside her parents in the churchyard of St Peter, Aungier Street, Dublin. It was thought that with Gamble's assistance her brother Robert's body was secretly interred at the same time, but this has never been substantiated. Several of Mary Anne's poems are included in her daughter's collection of verse The dream and other poems (1833). A portrait of her in oils by Thomas Hickey is in Kilmainham jail museum (reproduced in Remember Emmet, 7).