• Stephen Joseph Meany, Fenian Convict “3498” (Dublin: “Irishman” Office, 33 Lower Abbey-street [...]; NY: distrib. by American News Company, Nassau-street [1869]), [i-v] vi-viii, [1] 2-108pp., ill. [1 lf. of pls., port.]. 17cm. [rep.from The Irishman].
  
• Military Mosaics: A Set of Tales and Sketches on Soldierly Themes (London: W. H. Allen 1888), viii, 303pp.
• Mated from the Morgue: A Tale of the Second Empire (London: Spencer Blackett 1889), 155pp. [available at Gutenberg Project - online].

• Blonde and Brunette: An Original Comedietta / by J. A. O’Shea. (London: D. Lane, 1875), 27pp. [acting copy];

• with S. J. MacKenna, Brave Men in Action: Thrilling Stories of the British Flag (London: W[ard] & Downey 1889; new edn. 1890), ill. [by S. L. Wood]; and Do. [another edn.] (London: Chatto & Windus, 1899), viii, 586, 8°.
• Leaves from the Life of a Special Correspondent, 2 vols. (London: Ward & Downey 1885), 8°.
• An Iron-bound City, or, Five Months of Peril and Privation, 2 vols. (London: Ward & Downey 1886) [330pp. in Kessinger reprint].
• Romantic Spain: A Record of Personal Experiences, 2 vols. (London: Ward & Downey, 1887) [ded. Wilfrid Scawen Blunt; available at Gutenberg Project - online.]
  
• Roundabout Recollections, 2 vols. (London: Ward & Downey 1892), 8°.

The substantial entry of John Augustus O’Shea by Nancy Murphy in Dictionary of Irish Biography (RIA 2009) contains details of his sibling’s literary attainments also with some account of his in-laws the Gills among whom Peter E. Gill was editor of the Tipperary Advocate and Thomas P. Gill was First Sec. of the Dept. of Agriculture and Technical Instruction. His father published Nenagh Minstrelsy:  A Volume of Original Poems, Songs, and Translations, compiled, revised, and published by J. O’Shea. (Nenagh: Office of the Guardian 1839) containing two prose tales and 100 poems by himself. [Copies in BL and TCD Lib.]

Available online; accessed 17.05.2024.)

John Augustus O’Shea (1839–1905), Irish journalist, born on 24 June 1839 at Nenagh, co. Tipperary, was son of John O’Shea, a well-known journalist in the south of Ireland, who was long connected with the Clonmel (afterwards Nenagh) Guardian, and published a volume of poems entitled Nenagh Minstrelsy (Nenagh, 1838 [recte 1839]). After receiving his elementary education in his native town, O’Shea was sent on 31 Oct. 1856 to the Catholic University then recently established in Dublin under the direction of John Henry (afterwards cardinal) Newman. In his Roundabout Recollections O’Shea has given an account of his residence at the university, with sketches of its rector, professors, and fellow students. In 1859 O’Shea migrated to London, and sought work as a journalist. His love of adventure led him to become a special correspondent. In 1860 he represented an American journal at the siege of Ancona, defended by the papal troops, and he described part of the Austro-Prussian war. Settling in Paris, he acted for some time as a correspondent of the Irishman newspaper, then conducted by Richard Pigott [q.v.]. For this paper, and for the Shamrock, a small magazine owned by the same proprietor, O’Shea wrote many of his best stories and sketches, especially the Memoirs of a White Cravat (1868). His usual signature was “The Irish Bohemian”. In 1869 he joined the staff of the London Standard and for many years was one of its most active special correspondents. In his Iron-Bound City (1886), perhaps the best of his books, he gives a graphic account of his adventures during the Franco-German war. He was in Paris through the siege. His subsequent services to the ’Standard’ included reports of the Carlist war, of the coronation of the king of Norway, and of the famine in Bengal. Many of his articles were republished in independent books. He left the Standard after twenty-five years association. Henceforth he wrote occasional articles in various English and Irish papers, including the Freeman’s Journal and Evening Telegraph of Dublin. He was long a regular member of the staff of the Universe, an Irish catholic paper published in London. Keenly interested in his native country he was a prominent member of Irish literary societies and a frequent lecturer. An attack of paralysis disabled him in his last years, and a fund was raised by the Irish Literary Society of London to relieve his wants. He died at his home in Jeffreys Road, Clapham, on 13 March 1905, and was buried in St. Mary’s cemetery, Kensal Green. He was twice married, his second wife and a daughter surviving him.

O’Shea’s admirable sense of style, his dash and wit, distinguish his writing and suggest a touch of Lever’s spirit. He was a witty conversationalist and raconteur and an admirable public speaker. His chief publications are: 1. Leaves from the Life of a Special Correspondent, 2 vols. 1885. 2. An Iron-Bound City, or Five Months of Peril and Privation, 2 vols. 1886. 3. Romantic Spain: a Record of Personal Experience, 2 vols. 1887. 4, Military Mosaics : a Set of Tales, 1888. 5. Mated from the Morgue: A Tale of the Second Empire, 1889. 6. Brave Men in Action (in collaboration with S. J. McKenna), 1890; new edn. 1899. 7. Roundabout Recollections, 2 vols. 1892.

John Augustus O’Shea was born in 1839 in Tipperary, the son of the Clonmel Guardian journalist John O’Shea. J. A. O’Shea and was educated at Dublin’s Catholic University. Briefly training as a doctor, O’Shea abandoned his studies to enlist with the Irish Battalion of Pius IX. He moved to London in 1859 and began work as a journalist, frequently signing his articles ‘The Irish Bohemian’. O’Shea’s writing became renowned for its impressive wit and anecdotal approach. In 1865 he made an unsuccessful political bid, before turning to journalism. A contributor to publications such as The Irishman and The Shamrock (both owned by Richard Pigott), The Universe and The New York Herald, from 1869 O’Shea’s journalism was almost exclusively special correspondence published by The Standard. At Metz during the Franco-Prussian War, O’Shea was captured and sentenced to death for spying by Marshall Bazaine. An appeal to the Emperor by other special correspondents garnered his release, after which he went through the Siege of Paris. Between 1873-75, he covered the Carlist war in Spain, and also portrayed the famine of 1877-78 in Bengal. For The Standard, he also covered several tours by royalty and dignitaries, accompanying the Prince of Wales on his Irish visit and later depicted General Grant’s visit during his world tour marking the conclusion of his term as President of the United States. In addition to his contributions to The Standard, O’Shea wrote occasionally for the Freeman’s Journal and Dublin’s Evening Telegraph. In 1885, O’Shea was voted president of the Southwark Irish Literary Club and became involved in London’s Gaelic revival. In later life, O’Shea wrote An Iron-Bound City (1886), based upon his special correspondence about the Siege of Paris, and several memoirs including Roundabout Recollections (1892) and Leaves from the Life of a Special Correspondent (1885). A traffic accident left O’Shea paralysed in the final years of his life. He suffered a stroke in 1905, and died 13 March in Clapham, London. [By Angela Dunstan.]

Reference: D. J. O’Donoghue, Poets of Ireland [1919]; Rev. Marie-Louise Legg, Oxford Dictionary of National Biography (2004) - available online. Works: Leaves from the life of a special correspondent (London: Ward & Downey 1885); An Iron-Bound City: or, five months of peril and privation during the siege of Paris (London: Ward & Downey 1886); Romantic Spain: A Record of Personal Experience (London: Ward & Downey 1887); Roundabout Recollections (London: Ward and Downey 1892).

Well may ye exult o’er the tyrannous slaves
Who, crushing your freedom, would rob ye of fame;
Would curse the fair sunlight that blesses your waves,
And deny ye, ’mid nations, the right of a name.

Look down with contempt on their impotent hate!
Show the world that beholds ye, that, even in chains,
Far more of the genius that maketh men great.
With you, than with them in their glory, remains.

When the Saxon, degraded and trampled, lay down,
And trembled to every foeman that came,*
The universe rang with your lofty renown.
And Fancy stood mute in the light of your fame.

Disdaining the barriers, — fetters and fire.
And malice and prejudice, — all that could bind,
With what strength does Hibernia still upward aspire.
Supreme in the proud competition of mind!

Day by day do thy great ones go down to the grave,
But thy genius expires not; but soars like the morn,
When it rises, pavilioned in light, from the wave.
As glorious as though but that moment ’twere born.

Where, where through the universe, varied and vast.
Can empire, or kingdom, or nation, present
Such genius as even in bondage thou hast.
Which brightened, like sunlight, wherever it went?

By reedy Eurotas no braver e’er trod.
When Greece, ’gainst all Persia, stood up in her pride,
And Pallas awoke in each bosom a god.
Than at Liberty’s summons can rise at thy side.

*Nec fult inventus quispiam qui hostibus obviaret. — Matthew of Westminster. [Mooney’s note.]

Nor e’er did Castalia’s fountain of song
More soul-stirring rapture of melody pour,
Than beareth the spirit of Erin along
In the music and light of the genius of Moore.

And Painting and Sculpture live, breatlie, at thy will;
And the Drama, which mankind’s dark history unscrolls,
Which readeth our hearts with mysterious skill;
The Priest of her Universe Temple, is Knowles.

And doth it not quicken the pulse and the blood
Of an Irishman’s heart, to remember the day
When Grattan, Burke, Sheridan, Curran, and Flood,
In supremacy shone — a refulgent array?

In poetry, eloquence, learning, our land
Retaineth her empire, and these shall live on.
Like the nature-built ramparts that circle her strand,
When the whirlwinds that sweep round her glory are gone.

There’s a cheering vitality o’er and within
Her children and her, that defieth decay;
And what may we hope not from that which has been,
Which no treasure could buy, and no Judas betray ?

But who can look over the billows’ bright foam.
And cast his glad eyes on that cluster of men
Who are struggling to give back to Erin a home, —
A dwelling for orators, jurists, — again; —

But must feel that the days of her glory return,
Revived by O’Connell, O’Brien, O’Neill;
O, cold is the heart that won’t vividly burn,
In patriot flame, for the cause of repeal.

Then, Erin, exult o’er the tyrannous slaves
Who, crushing your freedom, would rob you of fame;
Would curse the fair sunlight that blesses your waves,
And deny ye, ’mid nations, the right of a name.

Note: The poem given here is said by Thomas Mooney [q.v.] to be by ‘one of her [Ireland’s] brightest sons in exile, John Augustus Shea’ - apparently a confusion with John Augustus O’Shea (1840-1905; q.v.] - a born in Nenagh but moved to London and became a distinguished foreign correspondent, later serving as President of the Irish Literary Society (Southwark), 1888, who died in Clapham, London. (Nancy Murphy, "John Augustus Shea", in Dictionary of Irish Biography, RIA 2004; online since 2009).

Additionally, the Collected Poems of John Augustin Shea, collected by his son in 1846 - called “Shea’s Poems” on the half-title page [see online] - does not include the poem which Thomas Mooney ascribes to him but does contain others on patriotic themes such as ‘Tara” and “The Men of Our Island”.

D. J. O'Donogue points out that Richard Ryan referred to O'Shea as Shea in his Biographia Hibernica (1819-21) and this may have mislead Mooney, who was something of a literary magpie. In spite of the resemblance in their names - both being John Augustus [?or Augustin], the poet identified as Shea in O’Donoghue (Poets of Ireland, Dublin 1912; see note - as infra) was born too late to figure in Mooney's book, A History of Ireland (1853) and does not, in any case, match his American emigrant profile. It may be concluded, therefore, that the above poem belongs to John Augustus O'Shea and not his Shea namesake. [BS April 2024.]