DUFFY, CHARLES GAVAN. — Writer and politician, born in Monaghan (Ireland) on 12 April 1816, died in Nice on 9 February 1903. After collaborating in his youth with the Northen Herald and the Morning Register, he became editor of the Vindicator, a Catholic newspaper of Ulster, in 1839. In 1842, together with the two lawyers Tommaso Davis and Giovanni Dillon, he founded The Nation, the newspaper that was the most effective supporter of O'Connell’s principles, which D. initially shared. Imprisoned together in 1844 and released at the same time, they parted ways in 1846, when D. joined the Young Ireland party. Tried for high treason, he managed to escape conviction, and in 1849 resumed publication of his newspaper. In 1852 he was elected deputy for the county of New Ross, but was unable to reconcile Catholics and Protestants on the agrarian question, and in 1856 emigrated to Melbourne. There, in 1857, he became a minister and in 1877 rapporteur in the House of Assembly. Returning to Europe in 1880, he settled in France; D. was the first president of the Irish Literary Society (1891).
Works: The Ballad Poetry of Ireland (1845); Four Years of Irish History (1883); Young Ireland (1884); The League of North and South (1886); Conversation
with Carlyle (1892); Memoirs (1898); My life in two Hemispheres (1903).
Gabriella de Stefano