Sir Aubrey de Vere, 2nd Baronet

Sir Aubrey de Vere de Vere, 2nd Baronet (28 August 1788 - 5 July 1846) was an Irish poet and landowner.

De Vere was the son of Sir Vere Hunt, 1st Baronet and Hon. Eleanor Pery, daughter of William Pery, 1st Baron Glentworth.[1][2] He was educated at Harrow School, where he was a childhood friend of Lord Byron, and Trinity College, Dublin. He married Mary Spring Rice, the daughter of Stephen Edward Rice and Catherine Spring, and sister of Thomas Spring Rice, 1st Baron Monteagle of Brandon, in 1807.[3] He succeeded to his father's title in 1818. De Vere spent most of his life on his estate in County Limerick and was closely involved in the management of the estate. He changed his surname from Hunt to de Vere in 1832, in reference to his Earl of Oxford ancestors.[4] He served as High Sheriff of County Limerick in 1811.

He began writing poetry for publication at the age of thirty. His sonnets were described by William Wordsworth, who was a close friend and visited him in Ireland in 1829, as the most perfect of the age. His third son was the poet Aubrey Thomas de Vere, who published and edited several of his father's works.[5]

Works

De Vere produced numerous works over his lifetime. The most notable are: Ode to the Duchess of Angouleme (1815), Julian the Apostate: A Dramatic Poem (1822), The Duke of Mercia: An Historical Drama [with] The Lamentation of Ireland, and Other Poems (1823), A Song of Faith: Devout Exercises and Sonnets and his most famous work, Mary Tudor: An Historical Drama.[6]

In A Book of Irish Verse, W. B. Yeats described de Vere's poetry as having "less architecture than the poetry of Ferguson and Allingham, and more meditation. Indeed, his few but ever memorable successes are enchanted islands in gray seas of stately impersonal reverie and description, which drift by and leave no definite recollection. One needs, perhaps, to perfectly enjoy him, a Dominican habit, a cloister, and a breviary."[7]

References

  1. ↑ ThePeerage.com (entry #84913) http://www.thepeerage.com/p8492.htm#i84913 (Accessed 10 February 2015)
  2. ↑ John Burke, A General and Heraldic Dictionary of the Peerage and Baronetage of the British Empire (Volume 1, H. Colburn, 1833), 351.
  3. ↑ ThePeerage.com (entry #84913) http://www.thepeerage.com/p8492.htm#i84913 (Accessed 10 February 2015)
  4. ↑ John Burke, A General and Heraldic Dictionary of the Peerage and Baronetage of the British Empire (Volume 1, H. Colburn, 1833), 351.
  5. ↑ Ward, Wilfrid (1904). Aubrey de Vere: A Memoir. London: Longmans, Green and Co., p. 1.
  6. ↑ ‘The Poems of the De Veres’, Dublin University Magazine, XXI, 122 (Feb. 1843), pp.190-204.
  7. ↑ ‘Modern Irish Poetry’ [prev. in A Book of Irish Verse, 1895, & rep. in] Justin McCarthy, gen. ed., Irish Literature, 1904, Vol. III, p.pp.vii-xiii; p.11.
Baronetage of Ireland
Preceded by
Sir Vere Hunt		 Baronet
(of Curragh)
1818–1846 		Succeeded by
Sir Aubrey de Vere