Maturin, Charles Robert

▪ Irish writer

born Sept. 25, 1782, Dublin, Ire.

died Oct. 30, 1824, Dublin

      Irish clergyman, dramatist, and author of Gothic romances. He has been called “the last of the Goths,” as his best known work, Melmoth the Wanderer (1820), is considered the last of the classic English Gothic romances.

      Educated at Trinity College, Maturin was ordained in the Church of Ireland in 1803 and became curate of St. Peter's in Dublin in 1804. His early fiction, such as The Wild Irish Boy (1808) and The Milesian Chief (1812), pioneered the Romantic Irish national tale, which was often tinged with terror. His first popular success was the verse tragedy Bertram (1816), produced at Drury Lane with Edmund Kean in the title role, but he soon exhausted his gains from this and his next two plays were failures. He returned to novels, producing his masterpiece, Melmoth, the adventures of an Irish Faust. The author's ingenuous delight in the novel's bizarre improbabilities contributes to its freshness and force. The book captured the fancy of many British writers and was especially admired in France. Honoré de Balzac wrote an ironic sequel to it. Oscar Wilde (Wilde, Oscar), in exile, chose the name “Sebastian Melmoth” for a pseudonym.

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