Helen Blackwood, Baroness Dufferin and Claneboye

Helen Selina Blackwood, Baroness Dufferin and Claneboye (née Sheridan, 18 January 1807 – 13 June 1867), later Countess of Gifford, was an Irish songwriter, composer, poet, and author.

Helen then returned to England, where she lived in a Hampton Court Palace "grace and favour" apartment with her mother, four brothers and two younger sisters.

He died in 1841 of an accidental morphine overdose; Helen continued to spend her summers at his family estate at Clandeboye in Ireland, which now belonged to Frederick.

Her play, Finesse, or, A Busy Day in Messina, produced at the Haymarket Theatre with John Baldwin Buckstone as one of the actors, was a success, but the writer did not go to any of the performances, nor acknowledge her authorship.

Dufferin's poetry, often set to music by herself or others, reflects important concerns traceable throughout the early and middle periods of Victorian literature: a biting criticism of social class, a spotlight on Irish poverty and emigration, and a despair over loss and separation.

While Dufferin infused her early and later writing with an arch wit (particularly in her social satires), the songs and poems written during the middle of her life are marked by sentimentality and often a profound sadness.

"Sweet Kilkenny Town" is intensely Irish, and might fittingly be sung by any of the obscure thousands from Erin who toil for bare existence in the great Republic of the West.

Her son Frederick, who had always had a close and affectionate relationship with his mother, published a volume of Songs, Poems, & Verses by Helen, Lady Dufferin with a memoir in 1894.