Eyre Evans Crowe

Life
1799-1868; b. nr. Southampton of Irish parents; ed. TCD; his writings first appeared in The London Examiner and The Dublin Magazine; sent letters from Italy to Blackwood’s and continued to contribute to this periodical on his return up to 1834; issued To-Day in Ireland (1825) and Yesterday in Ireland (1829); he also reported for The Morning Chronicle from Paris, 1830-44, and issued a History of France (1831-36), as well as a History of the Reigns of Louis XVIII and Charles X (1854); contrib. an article on President Thiers to Lives of the Most Eminent Foreign Statesmen (1833-38); joined The Daily News, 1846, and ed. 1849-51; wrote Vittoria Colonna (1825) and Charles Delmer (1853), both novels, and The English in Italy (1825), stories; d. London, 25 Feb 1868. CAB ODNB DIW RAF OCIL FDA

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Works
  • The Pleasures of Melancholy; and a Saxon Tale (Lon 1819);
  • Today in Ireland, 3 vols. (London 1825) [contains ‘The Carders’; ‘Connemara’; ‘Old and New Light’, and ‘The O’Toole’s Warning’];
  • Yesterday in Ireland, 3 vols. (1829) [contains ‘Corramahon’, and ‘The Northerns of ’98’];
  • The English at Home (1830), stories;
  • The History of France, 3 vols. (Longman 1831-36);
  • contrib. to Lives of the Most Eminent Foreign Statesmen, 5 vols, ed. E. E. Crowe and G. P. R. James (London 1833-38);
  • Charles Delmer: A Story of the Day, 2 vols. (London: Bentley 1853);
  • The Greek and Turk: A Study (1853);
  • History of the Reigns of Louis XVIII and Charles X, a study (London: Bentley 1854).

[All the foregoing cited in Patrick Rafroidi, Irish Literature in English: The Romantic Period, 1789-1850 (Gerrards Cross: Colin Smythe 1980).]

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Commentary
Seamus Deane, gen. ed., The Field Day Anthology of Irish Writing (Derry: Field Day 1991), Vol. 2; dismisses Evans as author of ‘instant antiquarianism’ of the kind that would furnish much material in novels of Griffin and the Banims. (p.3.)

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Notes
Kith & kin: A son, Eyre Crowe (1824-1910), was sec. to W. M. Thackeray and published With Thackeray in America (1893). Another son, Sir Joseph Archer Crowe, was the father of Eyre Alexander Barby Wichart Crowe (1864-1925).

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