John O'Daly

O'Daly, John (1800-1878), editor and publisher. Born in Farnane, Co. Waterford, he was educated in hedge schools before moving to Dublin, where he opened a bookshop in Anglesea St. He issued Edward Walsh's Reliques of Irish Jacobite Poetry (1844) in parts. His teaching-text, Self-Instruction in Irish (1846), appeared under his own imprint at about the time when he involved J. C. Mangan in the making of the anthology, Poets and Poetry of Munster (1st series, 1849). Mangan's biographer, Fr. C. P. Meehan, tells how the poet would lean on the counter in O'Daly's shop and versify literal translations for ready cash. He followed this with a second series of Poets and Poetry of Munster (1860) with translations by George Sigerson. The Ossianic Society was founded in his Anglesea St. house in 1853. Douglas Hyde purchased O'Daly's books at the auction after his death.