John O'Leary (poet)
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John O'Leary (1830 - 1907) was an Irish poet and fenian. He studied both law and medicine but did not take a degree and for his political beliefs he was imprisoned in England during the nineteenth century.
[edit] Biography
Born in the town of Tipperary, County Tipperary, O'Leary was educated at The Abbey School, a local Grammar School and later Carlow College. He began his studies in law at Trinity College, Dublin, in 1847, where he associated with Charles Gavan Duffy, James Fintan Lalor and Thomas Francis Meagher.
After the failure of the 1848 Tipperary Revolt, O'Leary attempted to rescue the leaders from Clonmel Gaol, and was himself imprisoned from September 5, 1849. A further uprising in Munster on September 16, 1849 gave him an opportunity to escape from prison, which he took.
Unable to pursue his studies at Trinity College, O'Leary enrolled at Cork University, Cork, in 1850, and in 1855, he visited Paris, France, where he became acquainted with Kevin Izod O'Doherty, John Martin and the American painter, John Whistler. O'Leary subsequently worked as a financial agent for the newly-formed Irish Republican Brotherhood and was editor of The Irish People for a time.
In 1865, O'Leary was arrested in England, and tried on charges of conspiracy. He was sentenced to twenty years' penal servitude, of which nine years were spent in English prisons prior to his exile to Paris in 1874. Returning to Ireland in 1885, O'Leary and his sister, the poet Ellen O'Leary became important figures within the Dublin literary world.
[edit] Yeats' Tribute
In his poem, September 1913, the poet W.B. Yeats laments the death of O'Leary with the line:
- "Romantic Ireland's dead and gone; it's with O'Leary in the grave"
[edit] Works
- Young Ireland: The Old and the New (1885)
- Recollections of Fenians and Fenianism in 1896
