CAREW, Catherine Jane

Catherine Jane Carew, Baroness Carew, was an Irish-born British composer of songs for voice and piano. Born Jane Catherine Cliffe in Dublin in 1798, she was the daughter of Major Anthony Cliffe and Frances Deane. In 1816, she married the Irish politician and landowner Robert Shapland Carew, who was created Baron Carew in 1834. Her compositions were consequently published under the name Lady Carew.
Carew’s surviving works belong primarily to the tradition of the nineteenth-century English art song and drawing-room ballad. She composed settings of poetry by prominent contemporary writers, particularly Henry Wadsworth Longfellow and Alfred Tennyson. Her known songs include The Bridge, The Two Locks of Hair, The Old Clock on the Stairs and Mariana. Written for solo voice and piano, these works were published in London during the 1850s, principally by R. Mills. Copies of several original editions are preserved in the Women Composers Collection at the University of Michigan and have been digitised through HathiTrust.
Carew died at Woodstown, County Waterford, Ireland, on 12 November 1901.