Lydia Mary Foster

Last updated • 3 min readFrom Wikipedia, The Free Encyclopedia

Lydia Mary Foster
Born18 June 1867
Newmills, County Tyrone, Ireland
Died13 December 1943(1943-12-13) (aged 76)
Hollowbridge House near Hillsborough, County Down
Occupationwriter and teacher

Lydia Mary Foster (18 June 1867 – 13 December 1943) was an Irish writer and teacher, who wrote three books drawing on the experiences of growing up in rural Ulster in the 19th century in the Kailyard school genre. [1]

Life

Lydia Mary Foster was born on 18 June 1867 in Newmills, County Tyrone. She was the fourth of the six children of Presbyterian minister of Newmills congregation, James Foster, and Lydia (née Harkness). Foster had three brothers and two sisters. She was educated at home and was later sent to board at Miss Black's school in Holywood, County Down. Foster, with her sisters Jane and Bessie, moved to Belfast to establish a girls' school, the Ladies' Collegiate School, in the Balmoral suburbs, first at Myrtlefield Park, at 434 Lisburn Road, and then in Maryfield Park. [2] This was after Bessie had graduated from Trinity College Dublin in 1896 having studied modern languages. Their school taught boys and girls, both day pupils and boarders. Foster and Jane taught music, and possibly other subjects as well. Their brother Henry, who worked in Belfast, lived with them. All four of the siblings attended the Malone Presbyterian Church and were members of the temperance movement. Throughout her life, Foster remained attached to Newmills, visiting regularly and laying the foundation stone for the new manse in 1910. [1] Her brother, Nevin, was the only one of the six siblings to marry and was an Irish ornithological expert. [3]

The school closed after the deaths of Bessie in December 1917 and Jane in October 1918. The death of Henry in December 1922 left Foster alone, and having lost her hearing almost completely, she was in difficult circumstances. To support herself, she began to write literary sketches and dialect verse for a number of publications such as the Northern Whig , Ireland's Own , and the annual miscellany Ulster Parade. A selection of these writings were published as a volume, Tyrone Among the Bushes, in 1933. Foster also wrote plays, but these were not collected or produced. She is best known for her three books which were set in rural Tyrone around the time of Foster's parents and her childhood. The books, The Bush that Burned (1931), Manse Larks (1936), and Elders' Daughters (1942) were published by Quota Press in Belfast and are seen as part of the Scottish Kailyard school genre of writing. The Bush that Burned details the story of a young man becoming a minister despite opposition, and was widely read in Ulster and beyond. Aodh de Blácam referenced the book as evidence that there was little difference between rural Ulster Protestants and their Catholic counterparts. Manse Larks recounts a rural childhood of six siblings growing up in the minister's house. Foster's fondness for animals is clear from the book, she was a supporter of the RSPCA, and her companion in later years was a dog named Stewart. Elders' daughters explores the experiences, romantic dreams and misadventures of young women subject to paternal authority in rural Tyrone. [1] [2] [4]

As Foster's health declined and after the Belfast blitz of April 1941, she went to live with a married niece in Hollowbridge House near Hillsborough. It was to this niece that she dictated the last chapters of Elders' daughters. She died at Hollowbridge House on 13 December 1943. She is buried at Newmills Presbyterian Church, with her parents and siblings. [1]

Related Research Articles

Michelle Gildernew Irish politician

Michelle Gildernew is an Irish Sinn Féin politician from County Tyrone, Northern Ireland. She is the Member of Parliament (MP) for Fermanagh and South Tyrone, having been re-elected in June 2017 after previously holding the seat from 2001 to 2015.

William Forbes Marshall

William Forbes Marshall was an Irish poet and Presbyterian minister from Sixmilecross, County Tyrone, Ireland.

Stewartstown, County Tyrone Human settlement in Northern Ireland

Stewartstown is a small town in County Tyrone, Northern Ireland, close to Lough Neagh and about 5 miles (8.0 km) from Cookstown, 3 miles (4.8 km) from Coalisland and 7 miles (11 km) from Dungannon. Established by Scottish Planters early in the 17th century, its population peaked before the Great Famine of the 1840s at over 1000. In the 2011 Census the town had a population of 650 people.

Ivan Foster is a retired senior minister in the Free Presbyterian Church of Ulster and a former Democratic Unionist Party politician. He was a lifelong friend and associate of the Democratic Unionist politician and Free Presbyterian Church leader Ian Paisley, but in November 2006 became the most prominent Free Presbyterian to openly challenge Ian Paisley's decision to enter into a power-sharing government with Sinn Féin and went on to denounce Ian Paisley from the pulpit of his church in January 2007.

Newmills

Newmills is a small village in east County Tyrone, Northern Ireland, 3 miles (5 km) from Dungannon and 2 miles (3 km) from Coalisland. Newmills gets its name from a corn mill and kilns that formerly stood in the area. Local amenities include a primary school, a local shop and a number of churches. It currently has a population of approximately 400 people. The River Torrent flows through the village.

Michelle ONeill Vice President of Sinn Féin

Michelle O'Neill is an Irish politician who served as deputy First Minister of Northern Ireland from 2020 to 2022. She has served as Vice President of Sinn Féin since 2018 and has been a Member of the Legislative Assembly (MLA) for Mid Ulster since 2007.

Mary Ann McCracken Presbyterian Irish social reformer (1770–1886)

Mary Ann McCracken was a social activist and campaigner in Belfast, Ireland, whose extensive correspondence is cited as an important chronicle of her times. Born to a prominent liberal Presbyterian family, she combined entrepreneurship in Belfast's growing textile industry with support for the democratic programme of the United Irishmen; advocacy for women; the organising of relief and education for the poor; and, in a town that was heavily engaged in trans-Atlantic trade, a lifelong commitment to the abolition of slavery. In 2021, Belfast City Council agreed to erect a statue of Mary Ann McCracken in the grounds of Belfast City Hall.

Sophia Rosamund Praeger, MBE, HRHA, MA was an Irish artist, sculptor, illustrator, poet and writer.

Presbyterian Church in Ireland

The Presbyterian Church in Ireland is the largest Presbyterian denomination in the Republic of Ireland, and the largest Protestant denomination in Northern Ireland. Like most Christian churches in Ireland, it is organised on an all-island basis, in both Northern Ireland and the Republic of Ireland. The church has approximately 210,000 members.

Sidney Elisabeth Croskery OBE was an Irish medical doctor, traveller and writer who spent almost twenty-seven years in Arabia treating illnesses, particularly blindness, and establishing ante-natal services.

John Scott Porter

John Scott Porter (1801–1880) was an Irish biblical scholar and Unitarian minister.

William Dool Killen Irish ecclesiastical historian (1806 – 1902)

William Dool Killen was a minister of the Presbyterian Church in Ireland and church historian.

Rosemary Barton (politician) Unionist politician from Northern Ireland

Margaret Elizabeth Rosemary Barton is an Ulster Unionist Party (UUP) politician from Northern Ireland. She is a native of County Fermanagh and worked as a secondary schoolteacher in Kesh before being elected as a UUP councillor for Fermanagh District Council, and has been a Member of the Legislative Assembly (MLA) for Fermanagh and South Tyrone since the 2016 election.

Jane C. Bonar was a Scottish hymnwriter. Her hymn, "Pass away, earthly joy!", first appeared in 1843 in Songs for the Wilderness. Two years after, it reappeared in The Bible Hymn Book, compiled by her husband, Horatius Bonar, and was reprinted in the United States with other names appended.

Anne Crone was an Irish novelist and teacher.

Anne Jane Carlile was an Irish temperance pioneer and philanthropist, and one of the first women involved in the temperance movement in Great Britain and Ireland.

Martha McTier

Martha "Matty" McTier was an advocate for women's health and education whose correspondence with her brother William Drennan and other leading United Irishmen documents the political radicalism and tumult of late eighteenth-century Ireland.

Jane "Jenny" Greg in the 1790s was an Irish republican agitator with connections to radical political circles in England. Although the extent of her activities are unclear, in suppressing the Society of United Irishmen the British commander, General Lake, described Greg as "the most violent creature possible" and as someone who had caused "very great [political] mischief" in her native Belfast.

Thomas Ledlie Birch Irish minister

Thomas Ledlie Birch (1754–1828) was a Presbyterian minister and radical democrat in the Kingdom of Ireland. Forced into American exile following the suppression of the 1798 rebellion, he wrote A Letter from An Irish Emigrant (1799). Assailing the landed Anglican Ascendancy and vindicating the call for an Irish republic, it was the first published apologia for the United Irish insurrection. In the United States he found himself at odds with the spirit of evangelical revivalism.

David Wilson (artist) Irish illustrator

David Wilson was an Irish illustrator and painter.

References

  1. 1 2 3 4 Maume, Patrick (2019). "Foster, Lydia Mary". In McGuire, James; Quinn, James (eds.). Dictionary of Irish Biography . Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
  2. 1 2 Froggatt, Richard. "Lydia Mary Foster". www.newulsterbiography.co.uk. Retrieved 30 March 2020.
  3. ↑ "Author Lydia Foster was from Newmills". Tyrone Times. 20 July 2012. Retrieved 30 March 2020.
  4. ↑ "Lydia Mary Foster, little-known writer who intimately depicted Presbyterian life in Ulster". www.newsletter.co.uk. Retrieved 30 March 2020.
This page is based on this Wikipedia article
Text is available under the CC BY-SA 4.0 license; additional terms may apply.
Images, videos and audio are available under their respective licenses.