Poets

Felicia Hemans was an English poet.

Ancestry

Felicia Heman's paternal grandfather was George Browne of Passage, co. Cork, Ireland; her maternal grandparents were Elizabeth Haydock Wagner (d. 1814) of Lancashire and Benedict Paul Wagner (1718–1806), wine importer at 9 Wolstenholme Square, Liverpool. Family legend gave the Wagners a Venetian origin; family heraldry an Austrian one. The Wagners' country address was North Hall near Wigan; they sent two sons to Eton College. Of three daughters only Felicity married; her husband George Browne joined his father-in-law's business and succeeded him as Tuscan and imperial consul in Liverpool.

Early Life and Works

Felicia Dorothea Browne was the fourth of six Browne children (three boys and three girls) to survive infancy. Of her two sisters, Elizabeth died about 1807 at the age of eighteen, and Harriett Mary Browne (1798–1858) married first the Revd T. Hughes, then the Revd W. Hicks Owen. Harriett collaborated musically with Felicia and later edited her complete works (7 vols. with memoir, 1839). Her eldest brother, Lt-Gen. Sir Thomas Henry Browne KCH (1787–1855), had a distinguished career in the army; her second brother, George Baxter CB, served in the Royal Welch Fusiliers 23rd foot, and became a magistrate at Kilkenny in 1830 and chief commissioner of police in Ireland in 1831; and her third brother, Claude Scott Browne (1795–1821), became deputy assistant commissary-general in Upper Canada.

Felicia w..