Tighe, Mary (1772–1810)

Irish poet. Born Mary Blachford in Dublin, Ireland, on October 9, 1772; died on March 24, 1810, at Woodstock, and buried at Inistioge; daughter of Reverend William Blachford and Theodosia (Tighe) Blachford; married Henry Tighe of Woodstock in 1793.

Left fatherless shortly after her birth, Mary Tighe received her education from her mother Theodosia Tighe Blachford who had participated in the Methodist movement in Ireland and was unusually well educated for a woman of her time. In 1793, the young Mary, admired for her beauty, contracted what proved to be an unhappy marriage with her cousin Henry Tighe, a member of the Irish Parliament, representing Inistioge, Kilkenny. To add to her growing depression and declining spirit, she also contracted consumption around 1803 or 1804.

Mary Tighe was the author of Psyche, or the Legend of Love, a poem of unusual merit which was privately printed in 1805 and published posthumously in 1811, along with some other poems. Originally completed in 1795 and circulated among her friends, it was founded on the story as told by Apuleius in The Golden Ass and written in the Spenserian stanza. The poem had many admirers, including Thomas Moore, Felicia Hemans , and John Keats. In fact, a later study would show remarkable similarities between her poetry and that of Keats, while one of her sonnets would be misattributed to him. Psyche also won high praise in the Quarterly Review (May 1811) and was so successful with the public that it enabled Tighe to fund an addition to the orphan asylum in Wicklow, irresistibly known as the "Psyche Ward."