May CROMMELIN (Maria Henrietta Delacherois-Crommelin)

Maria Henrietta Delacherois-Crommelin (1849-1930) was known as ‘May’ Crommelin, and was born at Carrowdore Castle in County Down on the 30th August 1849, into the Delacherois-Crommelin family whose Huguenot ancestry and royal patronage by King William III she remained proud of throughout her life. She was the author of numerous books, short stories, and magazine articles, and became widely known as a travel writer as well as a novelist. May Crommelin continued to live, at least part of the year, in Carrowdore Castle until the 1880s when (after her father died in 1885), she took up semi-permanent residence in London. Although in later years she circulated in London's Victorian literati (her sister was married to the poet laurate, John Masefield), her novels set in Ulster are often rich in the Ulster-Scots dialogue of local characters, and display a remarkable insight into the everyday life of the Antrim and Down communities she wrote about.

The first book by May Crommelin was published anonymously in 1874 when she was only 24 years of age. Queenie: A novel was a 3-volume romance, as was her second novel My Love She’s But a Lassie, published in 1875. These were set in Canada, England, and Ireland, but without much local reference or description, and largely restricted to high society. Her next three books had an unmistakably Ulster backdrop: A Jewel of a Girl, (1877), based around Cushendun and north Antrim; Orange Lily, (1879), set in the area of Carrowdore in the Ards Peninsula of east Down, and Black Abbey, (1880) located at Greyabbey, near Carrowdore. Between 1880 and 1924, May Crommelin published more than 40 other books, but only a few were of particular Ulster interest. In 1899 ‘Divil May Care’; Alias Richard Burke, sometime Adjutant of the Black Northerners, was dedicated ‘To All Ulster Friends’, and is set in county Antrim, where an officer home on sick leave from India gets embroiled in a series of humorous adventures. The Golden Bow, again set in Ulster, appeared in 1912 and is a story, peppered with Ulster-Scots dialogue, of a poor but pretty girl tracing an unhappy childhood to a joyous engagement. The Luck of the Lowland Laddie (1900) has a Scottish setting, with a wealth of lowland Scots dialogue throughout.

Works by May Crommelin:

• A Jewel of a Girl (novel, 1877)
• Orange Lily (novel, 1879)
• Black Abbey (novel, 1880)
• The Witch of Windy Hill (short story, 1880)
• "Divil-May-Care" alias Richard Burke, sometime Adjutant of the Black Northerners (novel, 1899)
• The Luck of a Lowland Laddie (novel, 1900)
• The Golden Bow (novel, 1912)