Frances Browne (16 January 1816 – 21 August 1879) was an Irish poet and novelist, best remembered for her collection of short stories for children, Granny's Wonderful Chair.

According to Alexis Easley, "almost all of the poems Brown published in the Athenaeum were immediately reprinted in periodicals and newspapers," thus bringing her work to an even wider audience.

She quickly established herself in literary circles and, in spite of health problems, wrote essays, reviews, stories, and poems.

[5] Raymond Blair has argued that, while most of the legends “focus on the intervention of dark supernatural powers,” they also exhibit “sympathy for the oppressed” and especially for "disadvantaged young women.”[6] Browne regularly contributed short stories to magazines with a largely female readership, including a number to the Ladies' Companion, a magazine read by many well-to-do women of the Victorian era.

Her earliest contribution, made when Jane Loudon was the magazine's editor, was "Barbara's Satin: A Tale of the Cumberland Peasantry" (April 13, 1850).

Later contributions included the amusing "Mrs Sloper's Swan" (October 1853) and an eerie tale set in County Fermanagh, called "The Botheration of Ballymore" (April 1855).

Around this time her sister Rebecca married, and Browne "established a partnership with Emma Eliza Hickman, who served as her companion and amanuensis for the rest of her life.

It concerns a poor, orphaned girl named Snowflower who has the ability to command her grandmother’s chair to tell stories and to transport her to different locations.

Transported to the castle of King Winwealth, Snowflower asks the chair to tell a story each night for the amusement of the court.

[9] In 1886-87, the British-American writer Frances Hodgson Burnett published a fairy tale called “The Story of Prince Fairyfoot”.

The festival, which takes place in October, “celebrates the rich cultural and literary heritage of East Donegal.” It includes lectures, musical performances, and a multilingual poetry competition, with awards for poems in English, Irish, and Ulster Scots.

Thomas McLean examines her longest poem, "The Star of Attéghéi", and its relationship to the war in Circassia in a 2012 monograph, The Other East and Nineteenth-Century British Literature.