Dudley Costello

Life
1803-1865; draughtsman, journalist & novelist; b. Ireland and named for Dubhaltach Caoch Mac Coisdealbhaigh; son of Col. James Costello, a British Army officer and his French wife Elizabeth; younger br. of Louis Stuart Colstello [q.v.]; taken with his sister by their mother to France after death of father, 1814; sent to Sandhurst (RMC); served in India, Canada, and W. Indies; resigned from Army, 1828; settled in Paris and worked as draughtsman to Baron Cuvier; copied illuminated MSS at Bibliothèque Royale in collaboration with his sister who revived their appreciation; appt. foreign corr. to the Morning Herald, c. 1838, and later the Daily Post; worked as sub-ed. on the Examiner in later years; m. Mary Frances Costell (d.1865); wrote several works of fiction incl. the novels The Millionaire of Mincing Lane (1845) and Faint Heart Never Won Fair Lady (1859); d. London incl. bur. with his wife at Highgate. ODNB WIKI

 

Works
Fiction
  • Stories from a Screen (London: Bradbury and Evans 1855), vi, (2), 319pp. [20 cm.].
  • The Joint-stock Banker: A Tale of the Day (London: J. & C. Brown 1856), viii, 285Pp., ill. [front. ; 17 cm.]
  • The Millionaire of Mincing Lane: A Tale of the Day [Routledge's Railway Library ser. 164] (London; NY: G. Routledge & Co. 1858), vii, 335pp.
  • Faint heart never won Fair Lady: A Modern Story [Yellow-back collection; New edn.] (London; NY: Routledge, Warne, & Routledge 1859), 316pp.
Travel
  • Strawberry Hill: [and] Strawberry Hill Revisited, with illustrations by W[illiam] A[lfred] Delamotte [from Ainsworth's Magazine, March, April, 1842] (1842), 17pp. [ills.: 21 cuts and facs. of signatures; 9x7 in.]);
  • The Beggars of London ([S.l.] [1850]), 11pp.;
  • A Tour Through the Valley of the Meuse, in a series of views taken on the spot,with the legends of the Walloon country and the Ardennes 2nd edn.] (London: Chapman & Hall MDCCCXLVI. [1846]), xiii, 316pp.;
  • Piedmont and Italy from the Alps to the Tiber, with a description and historical narrative, ill. 2 vols. (London, NY: J. Virtue 1861), and Do. [rep. edn.] (Virtue 1929).
Drawing
  • “Cross in Nevern Churchyard, Pembrokeshire”, Dudley Costello del.; Isaac Mills sculp. [engr.], ([S.l.: s.n.] 1834), 1 print, engraving, b&w; 160x98 mm., paper size 227x142 mm. [copy held in Welsh Landscape Collection [Casgliad Tirlun Cymru] of National Library of Wales.]

Bibliographical details
Holidays with Hobgoblins and Talk of Strange Things (London: John Camden Hotten, Piccadilly 1861), [4], 332pp., ill. [4 livs. of pls.by George Cruikshank; coll. of John Forster in Nat. Art Lib.] CONTENTS: "Shaving a Ghost”; “The Ghost of Pit Pond”; “Superstitions and Traditions”; “Monsters”; “The Watcher of the Dead”; “The Haunted House near Hampstead”; “Dragons, Griffins, and Salamanders”; “Alchemy and Gunpowder”; “Mother Shipton”; “Bird History”; “Witchcraft and Old Boguey”; “Crabs”; “Lobsters”; “The Opparition of Monsieur Bodry". (Available at COPAC - online.)

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Notes
Dubhaltach Caoch Mac Coisdealbhaigh [Dudley McCostello]: An officer in the Confederate Army in 1642 and later colonel in Spanish Royal Army, he returned to Ireland at the Restoration and turned rapparee on failing to regain his lands; proclaimed tory and rebel, 1666; and conducted a vendetta in raids on the Dillon clan of Anglo-Norman landowners until shot dead by Capt. Theobald Dillon in March 1667. Figures in s featured in the Leabhar na nGenealach [Genealogy] of Dubhaltach Mac Fhirbhisigh as Dubhaltach Caoch (827.2) and in his Cuimre as Dubhaltach Colonel, mac Suirtain Buidhe Mec Goisdelbh (1416.1). (Wikipedia - online; accessed 02.12.2023.)

ODNB: Note that he is cited as a jurist and novelist in the old Dictionary of National Biography by G[erald] C[lement] Boase.