JAMES SHERIDAN KNOWLES BIOGRAPHY

KNOWLES, JAMES SHERIDAN (1784-1862). —Dramatist, s. of James K., schoolmaster and lexicographer, was born at Cork. He was the author of a ballad, The Welsh Harper , which had great popularity, and gained for him the notice of Hazlitt and others. For some years he studied medicine, which, however, he abandoned for literature, and produced several plays, including Caius Gracchus (1815), Virginius (1820), The Hunchback (1832), and The Love Chase (1837), in some of which he acted. He gave up the stage in 1843, became a preacher in connection with the Baptist communion, and enjoyed great popularity. He pub. two polemical works, The Rock of Rome , and The Idol demolished by its own Priests .