Conyngham, Elizabeth Emmet Lenox (née Holmes ) (b. 1800), poet and translator, was born in Dublin, the only child of the barrister and orator Robert Holmes (qv), barrister, and his wife Mary Anne Holmes (qv) (née Emmet), who died shortly after the execution of her brother Robert Emmet (qv) in 1803. In early 1827 Elizabeth married George Lenox Conyngham, of Springhill, Co. Londonderry, chief clerk in the Foreign Office in London, with whom she had a son and daughter. Her first publication, The dream and other poems (1833), included several translations from the German poet Friedrich von Matthison which were singled out for particular praise in a generally favourable review by Charles Stuart Stanford, editor of the Dublin University Magazine. He referred to her as ‘perhaps, the first lady in this country who made German literature her study’. This was followed by Hella and other poems (1836), Horae poeticae: lyrical and other poems (1859), and Eiler and Helvig: a Danish legend in verse (1863). Her father lived with her in her London home after his retirement in 1852.
Sources
Dublin University Magazine, iv (1834), 116; O'Donoghue; Mina Lenox Conyngham, An old Ulster house (1946); Patrick O'Neill, ‘The reception of German literature in Ireland 1750–1850, part 2’, Studia Hibernica, nos. 17–18 (1977–8)