Frances Sheridan

Frances Sheridan was born in 1724 in County Dublin to an Anglican minister who believed writing would only multiply love letters, yet her brothers secretly taught her Latin and botany while she struggled with a childhood lameness. She defied her father's ban on female education by composing a two-volume romance on his coarse household account paper at fifteen, then entered the Dublin theatre world where she met Thomas Sheridan during the chaotic Kelly's Riot of 1746. Her anonymous poetic pamphlet defending Thomas against his attackers revealed her hidden literary fire before she eventually joined the man who would become her husband and co-creator of a legendary Irish literary dynasty.