Novelist and lyric poet, born Limerick, Ireland, 1803; died Cork, Ireland, 1840. At the age of 19 he went to London hoping to stage some plays he had written, with a view to revolutionizing dramatic taste. Unable to obtain an opening, he became a literary drudge, but after two years his talents were recognized and he published a series of novels descriptive of life in the south of Ireland. His "Collegians," dramatized by another hand under the title of "The Colleen Bawn" is perhaps the best Irish romance. In 1838 he entered the Christian Brothers after ending his literary career by destroying nearly all his unpublished manuscripts.