Author: Furlong, Thomas
Biography:
FURLONG, Thomas (1794-1827: DIB)
He was born at Ballylough, Scarawalsh, in Co. Wexford, to a farming family but the names of his parents are not known. He received little education and was apprenticed to a Dublin grocer at the age of fourteen. An elegy that he wrote when his master died attracted the attention of John Jamieson, the distiller, who gave him a position in his counting house. In about 1815 Furlong sent one of his poems to Thomas Moore (q.v.) and was encouraged by his response. The 1819 first edition of his The Misanthrope was issued by Henry Colburn in London but later withdrawn when the corrected second edition was published; no copies of the first edition have been located. He contributed to Colburn’s New Monthly Magazine, co-founded the New Irish Magazine in 1822, and wrote for the Dublin and London Magazine. His poems were praised by Sydney Owenson and Charles Robert Maturin (qq.v.). He was a fervent supporter of Catholic emancipation and knew Daniel O’Connell. He died after a brief illness and was buried in the churchyard at Drumcondra, Co. Dublin. At the time of his death he was composing poetic versions in English of Gaelic songs for James Hardiman’s Irish Minstrelsy; he did not know Irish and worked from literal translations. He was also writing his Doom of Derenzie which was published posthumously. Irish Minstrelsy includes a memoir of Furlong by Hardiman. (DIB 24 Feb. 2021; ODNB 24 Feb. 2021; James Hardiman, “Memoir of Thomas Furlong,” Irish Minstrelsy [1831]) SR