Life
1821-1875; b. ‘Castle Keon’, Co. Leitrim; son of barrister; suffered death of his father and mother respectively in 1824 and 1825; raised by his maternal grandmother; ed. Stonyhurst, and lived as a soldier of fortune in N. Africa; Gray’s Inn; m. in 1846; became Conservative correspondent to the Morning Post, 1847-59; associated with the London Journal, 1852 where his novel Harding the Moneyspinner (1852) was serialised; issued Dion and the Sybils: A Romance of the First Century (1866), the best-known of his novels; travelled to India in 1858 and was appointed Secretary of the Bermudas on his return, 1859; died Bermuda. ODNB PI DIW SUTH
[ top ]
References
Dictionary of National Biography novelist and colonial sec.; ed. Dolman’s Magazine, 1846; staff of Morning Post, 1848, and rep. at St. Petersburg, 1850 and 1856; ed. Bengal Hurkaru in Calcutta, 1858; Bermuda sec., 1859-75. Published novels. [Note inconsistency, above.]
D. J. O’Donoghue, The Poets of Ireland: A Biographical Dictionary (Dublin: Hodges Figgis & Co. 1912), lists also Dion and the Sibyls [A Romance of the First Century]; contrib. Catholic mags.; Lord Lytton secured the Bermuda post for him.
John Sutherland, The Longman Companion to Victorian Fiction (Longmans 1988; rep. 1989); friends incl. Bulwer-Lytton; Colonial Sec. to Bermuda, 1859 [sic]; novels incl. Dion and the Sibyls (1866), first century romance; Harding the Money Spinner (1879; prev. ser. London Journal in 1852). His novels were popular. BL 2.
[ top ]