an Irish novelist, born at Thurles in Tipperary, Ireland. Kavanagh's literary career began after the move of her and her mother to London in about 1844, after separating from her father in France. Thereafter she supported herself and her invalid mother, Bridget (a lifelong companion), with her writing career. Her first book was Three Paths (1847), a story for the young; but her first work to attract notice was Madeleine, a Tale of Auvergne (1848), a story of “heroic charity and living faith founded on fact.”
