Helen Dufferin (1807–1867)

Helen Selina Sheridan was a daughter of the novelist Caroline Henrietta Sheridan and a granddaughter of the playwright-manager Richard Brinsley Sheridan. Caroline Norton, the writer and women's rights activist, was one of her sisters. In 1825, at age 17, she married Capt. Price Blackwood and with him became Helen Selina Blackwood, 4th baroness Dufferin and Claneboye (Lady Dufferin). She was later Helen Selina Hay, countess of Gifford. She was a member of fashionable and literary circles, in which she met Benjamin Disraeli, who in later life said she had been "his chief admiration." Helen began writing poems, songs and private theatricals in childhood. After the death of her first husband, she supervised her son Frederick's education and accompanied him on his travels. A trip up the Nile in Egypt led to her publication Lispings from Low Latitudes; or Extracts from the Journal of the Hon. Impulsia Gushington (1863). She also wrote a play called Finesse; or a Busy Day in Messina, which was performed in London in 1863. Most of her songs and poems were first published anonymously. A collection called Songs, Poems and Verses (1894) was published after her death with a memoir by her son.