Career
Born into the chief landowning family of Connemara, the Martins of Ballynahinch Castle, a branch of the Martyn Tribe of Galway. Her first novel, Saint Etienne, a tale of the Vendean War, was published in 1845. Educated at home and by herself, she was fluent in Irish, English, French and a number of other languages.
According to Maria Edgeworth, who had met her during her tour of Connemara in 1833, she was courted in 1834 by Count Adolphe de Werdinsky, whom she had met in London earlier that year.
Upon her refusal of marriage, he feigned a suicide attempt at Ballynahinch. In the same year, her father died of famine fever contracted while visiting his tenants in the Clifden workhouse.
On the death of her father, she inherited a heavily encumbered estate of 200,000 acres (810 km2). In the following two years her remaining fortune was destroyed in the potato famine as she attempted to alleviate its effects on her tenants.
