Charles Lever, famous writer of Irish stories, was born in Dublin August 31, 1806. He was educated at Trinity College, Dublin, and afterwards studied medicine at the Universities of Gottingen, Heidelberg and Vienna. In 1829 he was appointed medical officer on an emigrant ship sailing between England and Quebec, although he did not take his degree of M.D. until 1831—emigrants apparently being considered in those days unworthy of skilled attention. In 1830 he published an article in Bolsters Cork Quarterly Magazine but did not quit medicine permanently for literature until 1842. Some of his books were published under the pseudonym "Cornelius O'Dowd," but most of them were under his own name. The sale of his books was greatly helped, as were those of Dickens, by the engravings made for them by Hablot K. Browne ("Phiz").
He was married to Kate Barker in 1832. She died at Trieste in 1870, and he at the same place June 3, 1872. Both are buried in the British Cemetery there.
Lever's story reprinted by Beadle is far from being representative of his style.
REFERENCES: W. J. Fitzpatrick, The Life of Charles James Lever, 2 vols.; E. Downey, Charles Lever, His Life in His Letters, 2 vols.
Fireside Library. No. 26