William Thomas Fitzgerald (13 April 1759 – 9 July 1829) was an Irish/British poet.

Life

Fitzgerald was the son of Colonel John Austen (or Anster) Fitzgerald of the Dutch service and Henrietta Martin, daughter of an Antigua planter and sister of Samuel Martin MP. Fitzgerald's own sister married barrister John Anthony Fonblanque. The family were linked to the Fitzgerald family of Munster. Educated at Greenwich, the Royal

College of Navarre The College of Navarre (french: Collège de Navarre) was one of the colleges of the historic University of Paris, rivaling the Sorbonne and renowned for its library. History It was founded by Queen Joan I of Navarre in 1305, who provided for th ...

in the University of Paris and the

Inner Temple The Honourable Society of the Inner Temple, commonly known as the Inner Temple, is one of the four Inns of Court and is a professional associations for barristers and judges. To be called to the Bar and practise as a barrister in England and ...

where his tutor was Vicary Gibbs''William Thomas Fitz-Gerald -The Annual Biography and Obituary 1830'' Longman Rees & Co, London, 1830 he married very late in life to Maria Howorth in December 1826. It appears only one of their children was born after this marriage. They were the parents of the Victorian painter

John Anster Fitzgerald John Anster Christian Fitzgerald (1819 – 1906) was a Victorian era fairy painter and portrait artist. He was nicknamed "Fairy Fitzgerald" for his main genre. Many of his fairy paintings are dark and contain images of ghouls, demons, and ...

. Employed until about 1805 in the Navy pay-office Fitzgerald became subject to 'an asthma' for the last 30 years of his life and suffered from dropsy. These complaints made his movements lethargic. He was long a member of the committee of the Literary Fund and later one of its vice-presidents. A close friend of William Viscount Dudley and Ward whose wife, Julia, also had Caribbean ties Fitzgerald died at Dudley Grove Paddington 9 July 1829 aged 70.

Poetry

He has been described as "one of the foremost loyalist versifiers of his day". He wrote patriotic poetry during the

Napoleonic Wars The Napoleonic Wars (1803–1815) were a series of major global conflicts pitting the French Empire and its allies, led by Napoleon I, against a fluctuating array of European states formed into various coalitions. It produced a period of Fren ...

including ''Nelson's Triumph'' (1798) and ''Nelson's Tomb'' (1806).

Byron

William Cobbett William Cobbett (9 March 1763 – 18 June 1835) was an English pamphleteer, journalist, politician, and farmer born in Farnham, Surrey. He was one of an agrarian faction seeking to reform Parliament, abolish "rotten boroughs", restrain foreign ...

nicknamed Fitzgerald the "Small Beer Poet."

Lord Byron George Gordon Byron, 6th Baron Byron (22 January 1788 – 19 April 1824), known simply as Lord Byron, was an English romantic poet and peer. He was one of the leading figures of the Romantic movement, and has been regarded as among the ...

mentioned him in the opening line of his ''

English Bards and Scotch Reviewers ''English Bards and Scotch Reviewers'' is an 1809 satirical poem written by Lord Byron, and published by James Cawthorn in London. Background and description The poem was first published anonymously, in March 1809, and a second, expanded editio ...

'': ::Still must I hear? — shall hoarse Fitzgerald bawl ::His creaking couplets in a tavern hall.... Byron was mocking Fitzgerald's practice of reciting one of his poems each year, at the annual dinner of the Literary Fund, held at the Freemasons' Tavern. Fitzgerald replied to Byron, though not publicly; in a copy of ''English Bards'' he wrote: ::I find Lord Byron scorns my Muse, ::Our Fates are ill agreed; ::The Verse is safe, I can't abuse ::Those lines, I never read. This copy of the poem somehow came into Byron's possession, and he added a verse reply of his own, dismissing Fitzgerald as a "scribbler."Ernest Hartley Coleridge, ed., ''The Works of Lord Byron'', Vol. 18, 1898. Fitzgerald was also parodied in the ''

Rejected Addresses ''Rejected Addresses'' was the title of an 1812 book of parodies by the brothers James and Horace Smith. In the line of 18th-century pastiches focussed on a single subject in the style of poets of the time, it contained twenty-one good-natured pa ...

'' of

James and Horace Smith James Smith (10 February 1775 – 24 December 1839) was an English writer. He is best known as co-author of the ''Rejected Addresses'', with his younger brother Horace. Life Born in London, he was the second of the eight children of Robert S ...

(1812); indeed, he suffers the sad fate of being remembered for inspiring the satires of Byron and the Smiths, rather than for his own writings.

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Fitzgerald, William Thomas British poets 1759 births 1829 deaths British male poets