Maginn, William

(1793-1842)

   Born in Cork, the son of a schoolmaster, he graduated in 1811 and gained a doctor of laws in 1819, both from Trinity College, Dublin. He contributed to Blackwood's magazine in Edinburgh and in 1824 moved to London, where he wrote extensively for periodicals, often under the pseudonym of "Ensign Morgan O'Doharty." He was assistant editor of the Evening Standard and founding editor of Fraser's Magazine, 1830. Thackeray used him as the model for Charley Shandon in his serialized novel Pendennis (1848-1850). Maginn parodied many famous poets and politicians, and his 1836 attack on the novel Berkeley Castle by the Hon. Grantley Berkeley led to a duel between the two men, although neither was hurt. His brilliance was overshadowed by his reckless, intemperate character, yet his writings were humorous and entertaining, when they were not biting and caustic. He ended his life in desperate circumstances; a year in debtors' prison ruined his health and he died of tuberculosis at Walton-onThames, Surrey. Some of his poems: "I Give My Soldier-Boy a Blade," "St. Patrick of Ireland, My Dear!" "The Irishman and the Lady," "The Rime of the Auncient Waggonere," "The Storming of Magdeburgh."

   Sources: Biography of William Magin and engraving of the Fraserians (http://www.munsterlit.ie/literarycork/fraser.html). Dictionary of National Biography. Electronic Edition 1.1. Oxford University Press, 1997. English Poetry: Author Search (http://www.lib.utexas.edu:8080/search/epoetry/author.html). Folk Songs. John Williamson Palmer, ed. Charles Scribner and Company, 1867. Innocent Merriment: An Antholog y of Light Verse. Franklin P. Adams, ed. McGraw-Hill, 1942. The Classic Hundred: All-Time Favorite Poems. William Harmon, ed. Columbia University Press, 1990. The Columbia Granger's Index to Poetry. 11th ed. The Columbia Granger's World of Poetry, Columbia University Press, 2005 (http://www.columbiagrangers.org). The Home Book of Verse. Burton Egbert Stevenson, ed. New York: Henry Holt and Company, 1953. The National Portrait Gallery (www.npg.org.uk). The Oxford Companion to English Literature. 6th edition. Margaret Drabble, ed. Oxford University Press, 2000.