George Robert Fitzgerald

Life
1748-86 [“Fighting Fitzgerald”]; b. Turlough, nr. Castlebar, Co. Mayo; related to the Lord Frederick Hervey, Earl of Bristol and Bishop of Derry; removed to England by his mother and ed. Eton; notorious for gambling and non-payment of debts in England and France; kept wild animals as pets in Co. Mayo; perpetrated the abduction of his own brother after two profitable and wasteful marriages in Ireland, following his elopement with Jane Connolly (d.1780), a dg. of Thomas Connolly, whose dowry he despoiled, and a Sydney Vaughan, dg. of a family in Ballina whose daughter, raised by family in England, who killed herself, reputedly learning posthumously of her father’s history in 1794;

his opponents in num. duels incl. Richard (“Humanity Dick”) Martin; charged with plotted the murder of a solicitor, Patrick [Randall] M’Donnell, employed by his father in legal disputes with him and betrayed by the actual malefactor, Andrew Craig; Fitzgerald pleaded that he had never intended to murder the lawyer and had never killed anyone in his many duels, but was hanged along with his own law agent [solicitor] Timothy Brecknock at Castlebar, Co, Mayo, he is the author of a poem called “The Riddle” published in Dublin in 1782; in the London edition of 1787, the bookseller William Bingsley points a finger at that Irish judiciary whom he deems to have condemned Fitzgerald with extreme severity on the strength of his satirical poem identifying them as cheats and frauds. PI DIB ODNB WIKI

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Works
As listed in COPAC
  • The Riddle: A Poem / By G----- R----- F--------- (Dublin; [s.n.] Printed in the year MDCCLXXXII [1782]), 1782), 28cm.
  • The Riddle. By the Late Unhappy George-Robert Fitzgerald [in verse] with notes by W. Bingley, formerly of London, bookseller (London: printed and sold for the editor by R. Jameson (London: printed for the editor, and sold by R. Jameson, No. 227, Strand, [1787]), 28pp.; [Editor"s Preface; text in quatrains, pp.1-17; Notes, pp.17-28], 4⁰.
See Library Hub Discover [COPAC] - online; accessed 11.08.2023.

The Riddle by George-Robert Fitzgerald (1782; rep. 1787)

[ See title-page and Preface with extracts from the Riddle and Bingley’s Notes - as attached. ]
 
A transcription of Bingley’s Editor’s Preface - making reference to the original Dublin edition of c.1782 and giving
a general account of Fitzgerald’;s vis-à-vis with Irish lawyers is copied at the foot of the album - as attached.

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References
D. J. O’Donoghue, The Poets of Ireland: A Biographical Dictionary (Dublin: Hodges Figgis & Co 1912), The Riddle, satirical poem, by the late unhappy GRF (London 1787); anthologised in Edkin’s Collection of Poems [q.v.].

[Note that the date given for The Riddle by D. J. O’Donoghue [q.v.] is at variance of with that in the earliest listing in COPAC - copies held in both the TCD Library and the National Library of Ireland [NLI] - and this suggests a posthumous publication - possibly a reprint of the other in the sequel to the execution. The matter is explained in the Editor’s Preface of the 1787 edition - as attached. ]

Wikipedia: There is an ample Wikipedia entry with details of his yputh, marriages, duels, and the circumstances of his death - citing Webb’s Compendium of Irish Biography [1878], Thomas Armstrong, My Life in Connaught (London 1892), and ‘Fighting Fitz and the Main Street Showdown’, in Connaught Telegraph (27 April 2010). Available online [accessed 11.08.2023]

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