Emily Hickey was born in Enniscorthy, Co. Wexford and raised in Gorebridge, Co. Carlow, where her father was rector. Acutely conscious of her ancestry—her paternal grandmother claimed direct descent from the Stuarts—she developed an early interest in the literary and had her first poem, ‘Told in the Firelight’, published in the Cornhill Magazine in 1866. She moved to London in the late 1860s and published in various journals while working at a series of jobs, including those of tutor and secretary. She had developed an early interest in the work of Tennyson and Browning and she co-founded the Browning Society in 1881. Her first collection, A Sculptor and Other Poems, was published the same year. Ten years later two volumes appeared that would maintain her reputation as a poet engaging with Irish matters, and increasingly with social issues: Versetales, Lyrics and Translations (1891) was followed by Michael Villiers—Idealist, and Other Poems. In the late 1890s, she became increasingly attracted to religious concerns and became active in the Christian Social Movement. In 1901 she converted to Catholicism and repudiated her earlier poetry, which she felt was insufficiently devout. She began an association with the Irish Monthly, where her work was regularly published, ensuring her continued links with Ireland. Her later poetry was greatly influenced by her new faith and the open intellectual approach and sense of enquiry that characterised her early publications was lost. Most of the poems represented here are from the earlier volumes, and though often spiritual in emphasis, they privilege a world of private emotion as a space for reflection on this condition. Her preference for the sonnet form highlights the containment of this reflective process as well as the importance of ultimate resolution. The simplicity of Hickey's diction and her use of full rhyme contribute further to the authenticity of feeling she seeks to create.