Biographical Note

John Boyle O'Reilly was born in Dowth, near Drogheda, County Louth, Ireland, in 1844. At about age eleven he began an apprenticeship at the printing office of the Drogheda Argus, then spent his later teens in Preston, England, where he was an apprenticed reporter for The Guardian and joined the Lancashire Rifle Volunteers. In his early twenties O'Reilly joined the Irish Republican Brotherhood, which led to his arrest and conviction for treason. He was originally sentenced to be hanged, but due to his youth his sentence was commuted to penal servitude for life in Western Australia. In 1869, O'Reilly escaped on a New Bedford whaleboat, the Gazelle. O'Reilly settled in Boston, where he became the editor of the Catholic newspaper The Pilot. In 1872 he married Mary Murphy. The couple had four daughters, Mary Boyle, Eliza, Agnes and Blanid. Works published during his lifetime include: four volumes of poems, Songs of the Southern Seas (1873); Songs, Legends and Ballads (1878); The Statues in the Block (1881); and In Bohemia (1886); a novel based on his Australian imprisonment, Moondyne (1879); and a nonfiction work, The Ethics of Boxing and Manly Sport (1888). He died in 1890.

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