Author: Burk, John
Biography:
BURK, John, later John Daly Burk (1772?-1808: DIB)
A Protestant probably born in Co. Cork, he entered Trinity College Dublin in 1792 but was expelled in 1794 for irreligious and seditious opinions that he had expressed in articles contributed to the Dublin Evening Post. He identifies himself Jacobinically on the title-page of his Temple of Superstition as "John Burk, citizen." (It appears however that the poem, published in the same year, was not a cause but a consequence of his expulsion.) He adopted Daly as a middle name in gratitude to a Miss Daly who is said to have helped him to escape the authorities dressed in a woman's clothes. He arrived in Boston in 1796, founded a newspaper, and had a play successfully performed there. Another play, The Prince of Susa, claimed on the title-page to Female Patriotism, may have been published but there is no record of any extant copy. He moved to New York and then to Petersburg VA, where he took American citizenship on 14 Apr. 1802 and married a local resident, Christianna Curtis, but was killed in a duel in 1808. (He had been arrested for libel against John Adams in 1798 but released on condition he leave the country; instead he stayed on under an assumed name and later wrote to Jefferson about it, seeking "some office or employment where I might be of service.") He published some fragments of a projected epic about America, the Columbiad, in newspapers during his lifetime; the final volume of his History of Virginia was completed by others and published posthumously. His only son John Junius Burk became a judge. (DAB; DIB; Appleton; Joseph I. Shulim, "John Daly Burk . . ." Transactions of the American Philosophical Society 54:6 [1964]; "To Thomas Jefferson from John Daly Burk, [before 19 June 1801]," Founders Online 25 Sept. 2020) HJ
Other Names:
- John Burke
- John Daly Burk