Ellen Mary Clerke (26 September 1840 – 2 March 1906) was an Irish poet, linguist and a journalist. Originally from County Cork in Ireland, Clerke was educated in Italy. She wrote in English and Italian, publishing works on astronomy, travel, and poetry. Her journalistic works, including on European politics and current affairs, were published in several magazines in the 1880s and 1890s. Clerke died in London in 1906. Early life She was the daughter of Catherine Mary Deasy, whose father was a wealthy brewer and shipbuilder in the town of Clonakilty, County Cork, and John William Clerke (c. 1814–1890), a bank manager of Anglo-Irish descent in Skibbereen, and later a registrar for his brother-in-law, Richard Morgan Deasy, a High-Court judge. Clerke and her younger sister, Agnes, were home-schooled by their parents, particularly by their father in the areas of classical languages and mathematics, which featured heavily in their education. At the age of 27, Clerke moved to Florence, Italy with her sister to continue their educations. Ellen Clerke's primary interest was Italian history and literature. She became an accomplished linguist. With the linguistic skills she acquired from moving to Italy, she translated Italian poetry and also wrote her own. Aside from translating and writing poems in Italian, she also wrote travel articles and published monographs on two planets -- one on Jupiter in 1892 and one on Venus in 1893. Aside from Italian, she also learned German and wrote articles in that language and also learned how to read in Arabic. Work Ellen Clerke published a significant volume of content throughout her life. For twenty years, she wrote frequently for The Tablet and also published many travel logs for the Dublin Review for twenty five years. She became one of the magazine's most celebrated journalists, writing many articles on current affairs including Madagascar Past and Present (1884), The Crisis in Rhodesia (1896) and Maritime Canals (1885). Ellen's younger sister, Agnes, wrote frequently for an astronomical journal called Observatory, and she encouraged Ellen to contribute to the same journal. Ellen Clerke was also a poet, having published several works of poetry during her life. The Flying Dutchmen, a poem which has been out of print for some time, was one of her most famous works. Clerke spent a long period of her life in Florence, Italy, and the Italian culture was a great source of inspiration to her, prompting her to