The Puppy: A Portrait

The American essayist Louise Imogen Guiney (1861-1920) illustrates here the delightful appreciation of the natural which is so often a characteristic of an authentically Catholic mind. Daughter of the Civil War General Patrick Guiney, Louise was born in Boston. After the death of her father, her writing was limited by her need to support both her mother and her aunt, despite early recognition among the Boston literati. In 1901, however, after serving as a postmistress and as a cataloger in the Boston Public Library, she was able to work in the Bodleian Library in Oxford, where she began a large anthology of the work of the Catholic Recusant poets. The American Christopher Morley called her “one of the rarest poets and most delicately poised essayists this country has reared.” Her works include not only essays and poems but also stories, and a co-authored biography of Robert Louis Stevenson. [For more of these Catholic essays, see the Table of Contents.]

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