John Boyle O'Reilly was born in Dowth, near Drogheda, County Louth, Ireland, on June 28, 1844. He was the second of eight children born to William David O'Reilly and Eliza Boyle. At about age eleven he began an apprenticeship at the printing office of the Drogheda Argus when his elder brother became too sick to hold the position. O'Reilly spent his later teens in Preston, England, where he was an apprenticed reporter for The Guardian and joined the Lancashire Rifle Volunteers. Upon his return to Ireland at age nineteen he became a trooper with the Tenth Hussars.

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, after a year as a prisoner in Australia, with the help of Father Patrick McCabe, 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.

O'Reilly wrote as well as edited. 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, at the age of 46, of an overdose of sleeping medication.

Sources:

"The Boston Irish Reporter." The Ancient Order of Hibernians of Massachusetts, June 1991. Conway, Katherine E. "John Boyle O'Reilly." The Catholic Encyclopedia. 2003: Vol. XI.

"John Boyle O’Reilly." LoveToKnow 1911 Online Encyclopedia. 2003, 2004.