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Life
1790-1850; b. Cork, contrib. Freeholder, and other Cork and Dublin papers; emig. London, 1834; became parl. reporter for Morning Herald and an early contributor to Punch; disappeared between 1840 and 1850; believed to have committed suicide by drowning in Regent’s Park Canal, though unconfirmed; contrib. “Whiskey, Drink Divine” to Cork Freeholder about 1820, being reprinted in The Dublin and London Magazine; The Tribute (Cork 1833), a collection of poems, is his only work. PI ODNB JMC
Works
The Tribute: A Miscellaneous Volume in Prose and Verse, with etched illustrations by A Cork artist (Cork: for the author 1833), viii, 228pp.; Odes of Anacreon (1844).
Quotations
“Whiskey, Drink Divine”: ‘[...] Why should drivlers [sic] bore us / With the praise of wine / while we’ve thee before us // [...] Chian [...] Falernain [...] Hibernian [...] Anacreon [...] the grape’s best poet [...] How his verse would show it [...] Had he Inisowen’ ... &c.]
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References
Justin McCarthy, gen. ed., Irish Literature (Washington: University of America 1904); gives “Whisky, Drink divine”, and call O’Leary a ‘clever journalist and humourist’.
COPAC lists A treatise on dispositions of property for religious and charitable uses: as affected by recent acts and decisions With an appendix containing the Donations' Act (Dublin: Hodges & Smith 1847), 237pp. [by namesake?]
Notes
Variants: variant obiit. dates are given in Dictionary of National Biography and D. J. O’Donoghue, The Poets of Ireland: A Biographical Dictionary (Dublin: Hodges Figgis & Co 1912), the latter 1881 [poss. another].
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