AN EASTER VACATION

London, England: Lawrence and Bullen, 1893. First Edition. Hardcover. Good Only. Small octavo, 7.75 in. x 5.25 in., p. 274, [15] (advertising). Blue leather boards with author's name in decorative frame stamped in black to front. Gilt title to spine. Rubbing to extremities. Light bubbling to front and rear boards. Corners bumped. Sunning to spine. Spine lean. Previous owners name in pencil to front pastedown and title page. Hinge cracked at page 128,. but mull holding. Half inch of top margin of title page cut off. Scarce. "Skrine, Agnes (‘Nesta') Shakespeare (‘Moira O'Neill') (c.1865-1955), author, was youngest among three daughters of Charles Henry Higginson (1824-94) of Springmount, County Antrim, colonial administrator in Mauritius, and his wife and cousin Mary, daughter of Sir James MacAuley Higginson, KCB, governor of Mauritius. The family was connected by marriage and descent with almost all the gentry families of Co. Antrim... Her poems began to appear in Blackwood's Magazine from 1892. In 1893 she published a children's book, The elf-errant (in which she subtly contrasts the Irish and English characters), and a short novel, An Easter vacation; both were quite successful. In 1885 she married Walter Clarmont Skrine of Warleigh Manor, Somerset, and for five or six years they lived on his ranch in Alberta, Canada. She expressed her homesickness for Ireland - and especially for the sea - in wistful poems about the country and people round Cushendun; they were published first in Blackwood's, but twenty-five were collected into Songs of the Glens of Antrim (1901).

"Like other authors during the Irish literary revival, Skrine (who always wrote as ‘Moira O'Neill') used an artificial ‘Irish' dialect ...In their own day they were widely popular, even beloved, especially by emigrant readers, and critically admired...The Skrines and their young son returned to Ireland soon after 1900, and from about 1907 lived at Ballyrankin House, Ferns, Co. Wexford. After the house was burned down by republicans c. 1921, the family moved temporarily to stay with cousins in the north, but moved back when Ballyrankin was made habitable. More songs of the Glens of Antrim appeared in 1921, and her Collected poems, which also contained translations from the Italian, in 1933. Her husband, Walter Skrine died 28 June 1930; Nesta Skrine became a recluse, and died 22 January 1955 in Ballyrankin." (from Dictionary of Irish Biography).