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Author: Conolly, Luke Aylmer

Biography:

CONOLLY, Luke Aylmer (c. 1782-1832: Belfast Commercial Chronicle)

No information about his parents has been located, but he was probably born at Ballycastle, Co. Antrim, where he later served as perpetual curate of the Chapel of Ease. His year of birth is usually given as 1780 but the preface to his two-volume novel, The Friar’s Tale (1806), is dated 1805 and gives his age as twenty-three. He studied at Trinity College Dublin (BA 1805) where he knew Charles Robert Maturin (q.v.). He seems never to have married, and he supplemented his meagre stipend by taking in boarders to whom he offered tuition. He served as chaplain to Ezekiel Davis Boyd, landowner in Ballycastle. Conolly contributed to periodicals, particularly to the Belfast Commercial Chronicle which published a brief memoir of him after his death early in 1832. One contribution, “Splendid Fete at Ballygoogagh,” a satire, was republished in American newspapers in 1818. He had a deformity in his right leg and, later in life, suffered from a stroke which caused paralysis on the right side, affecting his speech and forcing him to write with his left hand. His other publication is Historical Sketch of Masonry, a Sermon (1812). The most popular of his poems, “To the Enchanted Island,” was reprinted in several collections of Irish verse. (O’Donoghue; “Memoir,” Belfast Commercial Chronicle 27 Feb. 1832)

 

 

Other Names:

  • L. A. Conolly
  • L. A. Connolly
 

Books written (2):

Belfast: printed by Archbold and Dugan, 1813
Belfast: Drummond Anderson, Commercial Chronicle Office, 1827