I lived from 1844-1890.
I was from Ireland, and am in the English category.
The career of John Boyle O'Reilly was more romantic than fiction and had in it all the essentials of drama.
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He attended the National School, conducted by his father. He then was employed successively as a printer for the "Drogheda Argus", and on the staff of "The Guardian", Preston, England. He afterwards became a trooper in the Tenth Hussars.
Entering actively into the Fenian movement, believing in his inexperience that Ireland's grievances could be redressed only by physical force, he was betrayed to the authorities and duly court-martialled. On account of his extreme youth, his life sentence was commuted to twenty years' penal servitude in Australia.
Later study of his country's cause made him before long an earnest advocate of constitutional agitation as the only way to Irish Home Rule. In 1869, O'Reilly escaped from Australia, with the assistance of the captain of a whaling barque from New Bedford, Massachusetts.
In 1870, he became editor of "The Pilot", Boston, and from 1876 until his death in 1890 he was also part proprietor, being associated with Archbishop Williams of Boston.
His books include four volumes of poems:
"Songs of the Southern Seas", "Songs, Legends, and Ballads", "The Statues in the Block", and "In Bohemia"; a novel, "Moondyne", based on his Australian experiences;
His collaboration in another novel, "The King's Men", and "Athletics and Manly Sport".
A sincere Catholic, he used his great influence to forward the interests of younger Catholics destined to special careers, and to lift up the lowly without regard to any claim but their need. He was for twenty years, a valuable factor in Catholic progress in America. He was married in 1872 to Mary Murphy, in Boston, who died in 1897. Their four daughters survive them.
( information source newadvent.org )
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