Moondyne

John Boyle OaReilly (1844-1890) was an Irish-born poet and novelist. As a youth in Ireland he was a member of the Irish Republican Brotherhood, for which crime he was transported to Western Australia. After escaping to the United States, he became a prominent spokesperson for Irish sentiment and culture, through his editorship of the Boston newspaper The Pilot, his prolific writing, and his lecture tours. OaReilly published his first book of poems, Songs from the Southern Seas, in 1873. Over the next fifteen years, he would publish another three collections of poetry, a novel, and a treatise on health and exercise. His poetry was extremely popular at the time, and he was often commissioned to write poems for important and commemorative occasions. Most of his earlier work is nowadays dismissed as mere popular verse, but some of his later, more introspective poetry, such as his best known poem The Cry of the Dreamer, is still highly regarded. Amongst his other works are: Moondyne (1879), Songs, Legends, and Ballads (1878) and The Kingas Men: A Tale of To-morrow (with others) (1884).