Author: Lawler, Dennis Felix
Biography:
LAWLER, Dennis Felix (d 1815)
Lawler was the author mainly of short comic pieces for the London stage, some with music. His origins are obscure, but he was most probably Irish, as O’Donoghue claims, and could have been the “Dennis Lawler,” son of Catherine and James Lawler, who was baptised in the Catholic church of St. Michael’s in Dublin on 26 Jan. 1772. No baptismal record of the period has been found anywhere for a “Dennis F.” or “Dennis Felix” Lawler. On his title-pages he used “Dennis Lawler” or less commonly his initials. By 1803 he had settled in London and for ten years or more produced not only the farces and comedies that were his theatrical bread and butter—The School for Daughters (1808), Sharp and Flat (1813), etc.—but the poetry listed here, a translation of Mme de Staël’s Corinne (1807), and several prose fictions (Selim, or, The Royal Wanderer 1803, The Old Man of the Mountain 1803, Vicissitudes 1808). He died in London in 1815 and was buried at St. Giles in the Fields on 23 Dec., aged 34. (ancestry.com 10 Dec. 2023; O’Donoghue; Watkins; EN2; information from AA)
Other Names:
- D. Lawler
- D. F. Lawler
- Dennis Lawler