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The American composer Augusta Browne was not Lady Augusta Browne (1838–1909), ninth child and sixth daughter of Howe Peter [Browne], 2^nd Marquess of Sligo (1788–1845). A photograph of Lady Augusta Browne is frequently displayed and misidentified as an image of the composer. The two unrelated women were born in Ireland almost twenty years apart. Lady Augusta Browne sat for portraits and photographs because she was a member of the minor British peerage in Ireland. Her carte-de-visite from the 1860s belongs to the National Portrait Gallery in London. Lady Augusta Browne never married and led a quiet life in Westport, County Mayo.

Lady Augusta Browne
by Numa Blanc & Cie
albumen carte-de-visite, 1860s
NPG Ax46406

The image of Lady Augusta Browne in the Victorian-era photo does not depict the American composer.

A Musing

By Bonny Miller

On January 16, 2025

In Posts

Anagrams entice me: the same letters rearranged to yield a different word, such as begin/being. The words encapsulate the chicken and egg dilemma; that is, when does the being begin? This anagram sits at the heart of the debate on life and reproduction. Small words, big implications. Indeed, Mr. Anu Garg of https://wordsmith.org opines, “All life’s wisdom can be found in anagrams. Anagrams never lie.”

Who was J. W. B. Garrett?

By Bonny Miller

On April 26, 2023

In Posts

Who was J. W. B. Garrett, whom Augusta Browne married in September 1855, within weeks of first meeting him?

J. W. B. (John Walter Benjamin) Garrett was an artist who specialized in portraits, especially paintings made from small daguerreotypes, just as families today can commission a portrait to be painted from a photograph. Augusta Browne never revealed how they became acquainted. The connection might have occurred through an introduction at an art gallery, at church, a concert, or through mutual acquaintances at the Home Journal, in which Augusta published stories and Garrett advertised his services as a portraitist. Garrett exhibited a portrait of William Henry Browne, the composer’s younger brother, at New York City’s National Academy of Design in 1857. It seems plausible he would have made a portrait of his new wife, Augusta, but no evidence proves its existence.

Irish Curiosity (in Honor of St. Patrick’s Day)

By Bonny Miller

On March 17, 2023

In Augusta Browne, Posts

“Irish Curiosity” is the name of a short story published by Augusta Browne in 1848, one hundred seventy-five years ago. The theme of the humorous story is curiosity, which is considered a commendable thirst for knowledge in a man, but in a woman, curiosity is regarded as inappropriate interference in the affairs of others. Further, as Browne expressed in deliberately misspelled language that gave the flavor of an Irish brogue, a woman “of coorse can’t kape a saycret.”

Music, History, Women, and Heritage

Category: Posts Page 1 of 5

Who was Lady Augusta Browne? Not the American Composer.

A Musing

Who was J. W. B. Garrett?

Irish Curiosity (in Honor of St. Patrick’s Day)