Author: Frazer, John De Jean
Biography:
FRAZER, John de Jean (b c. 1803-52: DIB) pseudonym J. de Jean
He was born in Birr, County Offaly; his parents were Presbyterians but their names are not known. He seems to have had a good education and he trained as a cabinet maker. A note in one of his poems records that he spent time in London but he lived mainly in Dublin where, in the 1840s, he contributed verse to periodicals, including Charles Gavan Duffy’s The Nation, the Dublin Weekly Register, Dublin University Magazine, and the Kilkenny Journal. He published as “J. de Jean.” He married—Ancestry gives the name of his wife as Laetitia Reynolds but no record has been found—and had children including at least two daughters and one son. Through Duffy he was linked to the Young Ireland independence movement, and many of his later poems are political. Increasing ill-health made it difficult for him to work at his trade and he earned little or nothing from a collection of his verse, Poems for the People, published in 1845. His friends organised a subscription publication of verse previously printed in periodicals; Poems was published in 1851. The final poem in the collection, “The Sole Regret,” acknowledges his imminent death. In Sept.-Oct. 1851 he edited a periodical, the Irish Trades’ Advocate. He died on 21 Mar. 1852 at home in Jervis Street, Dublin, and was buried in an unmarked grave in Glasnevin cemetery. In Apr. 1852 meetings were held at the Dublin Mechanics’ Institute to establish a fund for his widow and children; a notice of one meeting records that contributions were sent from New York. The BL catalogue spells his surname “Fraser.” Some accounts of him give his age at death as 40; this is improbable given the 1826 publication of Eva O’Connor which was issued anonymously but claimed by Frazer on the title pages of his Poems. (DIB 15 Dec. 2021; O’Donoghue; ancestry.co.uk 15 Dec. 2021; Dublin Weekly Register 28 Oct. 1843; Dublin Weekly Nation 23 Aug. 1845; Kilkenny Journal 22 Mar. 1845; Freeman’s Journal 22 Mar. 1852; Freeman’s Journal 1 May 1852; Leinster Reporter 10 May 1919) SR