John Augustus Shea

Life
1802-1845 [J. Augustus Shea; pseud. “Adolph”]; b. Nov. 1802, in Cork; son of a successful tailor and business man; educ. by a Mr. Sullivan; opted for business rather than the church, as intended by his father; employed at Beamish & Crawford’s in Cork; his father suffered bankruptcy and emigrated to America with his family, excepting JAS, in 1819; present during the visit of Tom Moore to Cork in 1823; corresponded with Walter Scott; contrib. to The Merchantile Reporter and Bolster’s Quarterly Magazine, where he published a version of the Deirdre story;

moved to London, 1826; issued Ruddeki (1824), an oriental tale set in the 7th century - admired on sight by Scott and ded. with permission to Thomas Moore; also issued The Lament of Hellas (1829), both published in London; emigrated to America, 1827, and found employment at West Point under Col. [Sylvanus] Thayer; published Adolphe (1831), ded. to Hon Stephen Van Renssalaer - a longer poem containing his well-known apostrophe “To the Ocean”;

moved to Philadelphia and edited the Chronicle, 1832-33; worked at National Intelligencer, Telegraph and Georgetown Metropolitan in District of Columbia; moved to New York, 1839, and worked at Tribune from its foundation; publ. Contarf, or the Field of the Green Banner and Other Poems (1843); commenced a tragedy, Di Visari, “Time's Mission” and a ife of Byron; travelled to Suffield (Conn.) to read at the Calliopian Soc., and suffered stroke [‘congestion of the brain’], 4 Aug. 1845; d. 15 Aug. 1854;

Shea last completed poem, “Time’s Mission” was destroyed in a fire at the Tribune offices on 5 Feb. 1945, and partially recuperated by him from memory (and that of his son [George Shea] who added fragments of it to the Collected Poems, 1846); d. New York - shortly predeceased by his wife; obit. in New York Tribune, 18 Aug. 1845; a notice in the Cork Examiner affirms that ‘Ireland! his beloved Ireland! was his unceasing theme’ (5 Sept. 1846; quoted in Coll. Poems, p.13). RAF

 

Works
Poetry
  • Rudekki: A Tale of the Seventh Century (London: Longmans, Rees, Orme, Brown & Green; Cork: T. Allbut and Son, Hanley; King and Ridings 1826), 160pp. [prev. 1824 acc. Coll. Poems, p.10.]
  • The Lament of Hellas and Other Poems (1826).
  • Adolphe, and Other Poems (NY: printed by W. E. Dean 1831), q.pp.
  • Parnassian Wild Flowers (Washington [Georgetown]: Wm. Greer 1836), 72pp.
  • Clontarf; or, the Field of the Green Banner: An Historical Romance, and Other Poems (NY: D. Appleton & Co 1843), 156pp., ill. [1 pl.], incls. ‘Notes on Clontarf’, pp.131-38.
  • A Poem, Delivered at the Tenth Anniversary of the Calliopean society, Suffield, Conn., on Tuesday evening, August 5th, 1845 (NY: W. H. Graham 1845), 13pp.
Collected Poems

Poems by the Late John Augustus Shea, Collected by His Son (NY: For sale at the Principle Booksellers 1846), 204pp. 12°, ded. to J. N. Reynolds, Esq., ‘as a tribute of gratitude’ [incorps. Miscellaneous, incl. "Tara" and "The Men of our Island"]; Adolphe (1831) [two cantos]; Time's Mission; The Fairy's Vigil; the Tuscan Girl; Poems: Poem delivered before friends of Young Ireland; " on the occasion of Mr. Wallace's Lecture [both 1843]; Champ de Mai; Sacred Melodies [Chrismas, Corpus Christi, &c.]; available at Google Books - online].
Contribs.
  • “Deardra” by J. A. Shea, published in Bolster Magazine, II, No. 7 (July 1827), pp.256 et seq.

 

Commentary
J. S. Redfield, Notes from Moore’s Letters to his Musical Publisher, James Power (NY: Redfield [1854]: Shea crops up in John O’Driscol’s account of Moore’s visit to Beamish and Crawford’s brewery in Cork (See footnote, pp.103-04); Shea, who was then ‘a poetic clerk in the establishment’, and afterwards the editor of a newspaper in America, ‘quaffed a brimming draft from the same goblet’ that Moore had used to drink his complimentary glass of Beamish, prefaced no doubt by a corresponding sentimental speech, dispatched the relic to a glass cutter in Hanover Street, to have the name MOORE engraved on it as a precious memento of the visit of Erin’s Minstrel to the Cork Porter Brewery.’ (pp.103-04.) (See further under Moore > Works - as supra.)

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Quotations

See discussion of probable mis-attribution in Mooney’s History of Ireland, 2 vols. (Boston, 1853) under John Augustus O’Shea - as infra.

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References

D. J. O’Donoghue, The Poets of Ireland (Dublin: Hodges Figgis 1912):
SHEA, JOHN AUGUSTUS. — Rudekki, a tale of the seventh century; The Lament of Hellas, and other poems, London and Cork, 1826, 8to; Adolph, and other poems. New York, 1831; Parnassian Wild Flowers, Georgetown, 1836; Clontarf, a narrative poem, etc. . New York, 1843; Poems, collected by his son. New York, 1846, 12mo. Born in Cork in November, 1802, and died in New York on August 15, 1845. Went to U. S. A. in 1827 and became a journalist. He was a clever poet, and is mentioned with praise in Dublin and London Magazine, 1827(pp. 632-636). He commenced life as a clerk in Beamish and Crawford’s counting-house in Cork, and, like Joseph O’Leary (q.v.), P. J. Meagher (q.v.), and J. J. Callanan (q.v.), wrote early in life for The Cork Mercantile Reporter, afterwards contributing several pieces to Bolster’s Cork Quarterly. He went to U. S. A. in 1827. He was a friend of John Hogan the sculptor, and when O’Connell at one of the monster meetings was presented with the Repeal cap by Hogan, he was at the same time given a copy of Shea’s “Clontarf.” Shea was twice married. One of his sons became a judge. Richard Ryan, in his “Poets and Poetry,” calls him O’Shea.

O’Donoghue, Poets of Ireland, op. cit., p.421.

Patrick Rafroidi, Irish Literature in English, The Romantic Period, 1789-1850 (Gerrards Cross: Colin Smythe 1980), Vol. I, p.172.

 

Notes
Namesakes?: This writer not be be confused with John Augustus O’Shea - b.1840 Nenagh [q.v.]

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