Fitz-James OBrien
Life 1828-1862 [var. Fitzjames OBrien]; Co. Cork and raised in Castleconnell, Co. Limerick; wrote in manner of Poe; prolific contrib. to journals incl. Nation, Dublin University Magazine, Irishman, and Cork Magazine; emigrated to America [Boston?]; enjoyed a success there with his play The Gentleman from Ireland (1854); contrib. his best-known story, The Diamond Lens, to Atlantic Monthly (1857); died of wounds sustained at Battle of Bloomery Gap in the American Civil War, 6 April 1862; work posthum. edited by his friend William Winter as The Diamond Lens and Other Stories (1887). PI IF DIW MKA JMC OCAL OCIL
Works
- William Winter, ed., The Poems and Stories of Fitz-James OBrien, collected with a sketch of the author by William Winter (Boston: James R. Osgood & Co. 1881).
- William Winter, ed., The Diamond Lens and Other Stories by Fitz-James O'Brien, collected and edited with a sketch of the author, by William Winter (London: Ward & Downey 1887), [2], xx, 337, [1]pp. [19.3cm].
- Michael Hayes, ed. & intro., The Fantastic Tales of Fitz-James OBrien (London: Calder 1977), 149pp. [contains The Diamond Lens; The Lost Room; What Was It?; The Wondersmith; Seeing the World; The Pot of Tulips; The Dragon Fang Possessed by the Conjurer Piou-Lu.
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Criticism Francis Wolle, Fitz-james OBrien: A Literary Bohemian of the Eighteen-fifties (Colorado 1944) 309pp.
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Quotations The Wondersmith [first sentence]: A small lane, the name of which I have forgotten, or do not choose to remember, slants suddenly off Catham Street (before that headlong thoroughfare rushes into the Park), and retreats suddenly down towards the East River, as if it were disgusted with the smell of old clothes, and had determined to wash itself clean. [...] (In Poems and Stories of Fitzjames O'Brien, ed. William Winter, Boston: J. R. Osgood & Co. 1881, p.177; quoted in Patrick Rafroidi, The Irish Short Story in English: The Birth of a New Tradition, in The Irish Short Story, ed. Terence Brown & Rafroidi, Gerrards Cross: Colin Smythe 1979, p.28.
Two Poems by Fitz-james OBrien |
The Demon of the Gibbet |
The Lost Steamship |
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—attached. |
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References
A webage dedicated to Fitz-james OBrien: existed at www.vreative.net [ online - accessed April 1999; defunct Aug. 2010]. |
D. J. ODonoghue, Poets of Ireland (Dublin: Hodges Figgis 1912) lists The Poems and Stories of F. OBrien, [collected by his friend William Winter] (Boston 1881); he is represented by 2 pieces
in Hayess Ballads.
Justin McCarthy, gen. ed., Irish Literature (Washington: Catholic Univ. of America 1904), gives extract from The Diamond Lens, fiction, and Loch Ina, poetry. See also under under Street Songs and Ballads (Irish Literature, 1904), which reprints Molly Muldoon, written about 1850 [and] sometimes ascribed to Fitzjames OBrien: Molly Muldoon was an Irish girl, / And as fine a one / As youd look upon / In the cot of a peasant or the hall of an earl. / Her teeth were white, though not of pearl [...] Now Molly Muldoon liked Jemmy OHare [...] An Irish courtships short and sweet / Its sometimes foolish and indiscreet [during the service the bridegrooms piercing eye sometime awful espied! and the bride laid her eyes on the bridegroom no more! - until the day a an American letter is brought to the priest [saying] not in her karacter, yer Rivrence, a flaw [...] but I saw, God forgive her, a hole in her stocking! the moral conclusion disparagates a love that would be upset by a broken stocking.
Stephen Brown, Ireland in Fiction: A Guide to Irish Novels, Tales, Romances and Folklore [Pt. I] (Dublin: Maunsel 1919), lists The Poems and Stories of Fitzjames OBrien (1881); The Diamond Lens and Other Stories (London: Downey & Co. 1887).
Stephen Brown, S.J., Guide to Books on Ireland (Dublin: Talbot 1912), cites him as author of play, A Gentleman from Ireland NY 1854), set in London, with characters Gerald Fitzmaurice and Miss Clover. The same is called his most notable play in James D. Hart, Oxford Companion to American Literature (OUP 1983).
Brian McKenna, Irish Literature, 1800-1875: A Guide to Information Sources (Detroit: Gale Research Co. 1978), cites contribs. to Nation, Dublin University Magazine, Irishman, and Cork Magazine [dates supplied; bibl. as supra.
Patrick Rafroidi, Irish Literature in English (Gerrards Cross: Colin Smythe 1980), Vol 2 [biog. as in Life, supra].
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