Mangan, James Clarence (1803–1849)

Irish poet and translator. Mangan was born in Dublin, and worked as a clerk until 1828 while establishing his career as a writer. Much of his writing is concerned with Irish history and legend, and among his chief works are Anthologia Germanica (1845) and Romances and Ballads of Ireland (1850). He published English versions of Irish poems in The Poets and Poetry of Munster (1849), notably ‘Dark Rosaleen’ and ‘The Nameless One’. He is one of the few Anglo-Irish poets before W B Yeats.

Mangan wrote for the Dublin Satirist, the Comet, and The Nation (founded 1842), and contributed to many Irish newspapers under various pseudonyms. The account of his life given in his Autobiography is filled with images of fearful misery, deprivation, and persecution. His poetry is fitful and neurotic; at times he reached a masterly eloquence (often in his very free ‘translations’ of Irish or even Arabic, two languages of which he had no knowledge). An opium addict and an alcoholic, he died from cholera.