Katharine Tynan (23 January 1859 – 2 April 1931) was an Irish writer, known mainly for her novels and poetry. After her marriage in 1893 to the Trinity College scholar, writer and barrister Henry Albert Hinkson (1865–1919) she usually wrote under the name Katharine Tynan Hinkson, or variations thereof. Tynan's younger sister Nora Tynan O'Mahony (née Tynan, 1866–1954) was also a poet and one of her three children, Pamela Hinkson (1900–1982), was also known as a writer. Katharine Tynan Road (Bóthar Katharine Tynan) in Tallaght, which passes close to the ruins of her childhood home at Whitehall Farm, is named after her.
Biography
Tynan was born the fifth of twelve children of Andrew Cullen Tynan, a prosperous farmer and cattle trader and later a Dublin alderman for the Irish Parliamentary Party, and Elizabeth Tynan (née Reilly). She grew up in Whitehall, Clondalkin and educated at the Dominican St Catherine's, a convent school in Drogheda.
Her poetry was first published in 1875. She met and became friendly with the poet Gerard Manley Hopkins in 1886. Tynan went on to play a major part in Dublin literary circles, until she married and moved to England; later she lived at Claremorris, County Mayo when her husband was a magistrate from 1914 until 1919.
She worked for the Ladies' Land League, run by Anna Parnell, before turning to journalism, expressing her ardent support of Charles Stewart Parnell and Ireland. Her first volume of poems, Louise de la Vallière and other poems was published in 1885 and is still in print.
