Life
1821-1875; b. ‘Castle Keon’, Co. Leitrim; son of barrister;
suffered death of his father and mother respectively in 1824 and 1825;
raised by his maternal grandmother; ed. Stonyhurst, and lived as a soldier
of fortune in N. Africa; Gray’s Inn; m. in 1846; became Conservative
correspondent to the Morning Post, 1847-59; associated with the London Journal, 1852 where his novel Harding the Moneyspinner
(1852) was serialised; issued Dion and the Sybils: A romance of the
First Century (1866), the best-known of his novels; travelled to India
in 1858 and was appointed Secretary of the Bermudas on his return, 1859;
died Bermuda. ODNB PI DIW SUTH
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References
Dictionary of National Biography novelist and colonial sec.;
ed. Dolman’s Magazine, 1846; staff of Morning Post,
1848, and rep. at St. Petersburg, 1850 and 1856; ed. Bengal Hurkaru in
Calcutta, 1858; Bermuda sec., 1859-75. Published novels. [Note inconsistency,
above.]
D. J. O’Donoghue, Poets of Ireland: The Poets of Ireland: A Biographical Dictionary (Dublin: Hodges Figgis & Co 1912), lists also Dion and the Sibyls [A Romance of the First Century]; contrib. Catholic mags. Lord Lytton secured the Bermuda post for him.
John Sutherland, The Longman Companion to Victorian Fiction (Longmans 1988; rep. 1989); friends incl. Bulwer-Lytton; Colonial Sec. to Bermuda, 1859 [sic]; novels incl. Dion and the Sibyls (1866), first century romance; Harding the Money Spinner (1879; prev. ser. London Journal in 1852). His novels were popular. BL 2.
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