User:Waryme/FitzgeraldMurphy

Fitzgerald Murphy (1869-March 14, 1906) was an Irish-American reporter, poet, playwright, actor, and political activist. Born in Dublin, Ireland in 1869, not much is known of his early life before coming to America, however photographs and letters prove that he did originally come to the United States as a young boy, via his aunt, Mary Murphy Sullivan, with whom he lived for several years, and remained close to that family throughout his life.

He acquired his first job as a printer's devil for the Pilot in Boston, Massachussetts, then edited by John Boyle O'Reilly. He soon became a reporter as well, and practiced that vocation throughout his life

In 1886, he wrote his first play, the Shamrock and the Rose, which was about the Irish Rebellion of 1798. This play was published in Boston by W. H. Baker & Co. in 1889.

Between 1886 and 1892, he also wrote Looking Backward (a stage adaptation of the novel by Edward Bellamy, never performed), Another Man's wife (an adaptation of Kreutzer Sonata by Leo Tolstoi), and Pendonis (adapted from William Makepeace Thackeray's Pendennis). In Chicago, he ran twice for city positions, but lost twice. It's known from a published collection of William Jennings Bryan's letters that he was friendly enough with him to have been mentioned in one of them, and it is also known that his play, the Silver Lining, was played throughout the Democratic Convention of 1896 In Chicago.