Fitz-James O'Brien (25 October 1826 – 6 April 1862) was an Irish–American writer of works in fantasy and science fiction short stories. His career was marked by a significant contribution to the American literary scene in the mid-19th century.

Biography

Early life and influences

O'Brien was born in County Cork, Ireland; the exact date and year of his birth is debated. His first biographer, Francis Wolle, placed it between April and December 1828. His father, James O'Brien, was an attorney of some influence, while his paternal grandparents, Michael O'Brien and Catherine Deasy, owned Brownstone House near Clonakilty. Her parents, Michael and Helen O'Driscoll, owned Baltimore House in County Limerick. After James's death in 1839/40, Eliza remarried DeCourcy O'Grady, and the family moved to Limerick, where O'Brien spent most of his teenage years. particularly in the geography of the south west. His first six poems were published in The Nation, Within the Crystal Palace, O'Brien was appointed editor for The Parlour Magazine.

In 1859, O'Brien solidified his literary prowess with two more stories: "What Was It? A Mystery" in Harper's New Monthly Magazine Winter wrote a chapter on O'Brien in his book Brown Heath and Blue Bells (New York, 1895). O'Brien was satirized as "Fitzgammon O'Bouncer" in William North's posthumously published novel The Slave of the Lamp (1855).

Bibliography

Short stories

  • "Philosophy in Disguise" (The Family Friend, Nov. 1849).
  • "The Story of a Child" (The Family Friend, Mar. 1851).
  • "The Sunbeam, the Dew-Drop, and the Rose" (The Parlour Magazine, May 1851).
  • "An Arabian Night-mare" (Household Words, Nov. 8, 1851).
  • "A Legend of Barlagh Cave" (The Home Companion, Jan. 31, 1852).
  • "The Wonderful Adventures of Mr. Papplewick" (The Lantern, 1852).
  • "The Gory Gnome; or, The Lurid Lamp of the Volcano!" (The Lantern, Feb. 1852).
  • "Aladdin at the Crystal Palace; or, Science versus Fairy-Land" (The Leisure Hour, Apr. 1852).
  • "The Old Boy" (The American Whig Review, Aug. 1852).
  • "The Man Without a Shadow" (The Lantern, Sep. 4, 1852).
  • "A Voyage in My Bed" (The American Whig Review, Aug. 1852).
  • "One Event" (The American Whig Review, Oct. 1852).
  • "The King of Nodland and His Dwarf" (The American Whig Review, Dec. 1852).
  • "A Peep Behind the Scenes" (Harper's New Monthly Magazine, Mar. 1854).
  • "The Bohemian" (Harper's New Monthly Magazine, Jul. 1855).
  • "Duke Humphrey's Dinner" (Harper's New Monthly Magazine, Aug. 1855).
  • "The Pot of Tulips" (Harper's New Monthly Magazine, Nov. 1855).
  • "The Dragon-Fang Possessed by the Conjuror Piou-Lu" (Harper's New Monthly Magazine, Mar. 1856).
  • "The Hasheesh Eater" (Putnam's Monthly Magazine, Sep. 1856).
  • "A Terrible Night" (Harper's New Monthly Magazine, Oct. 1856).
  • "The Mezzo-Matti" (Putnam's Monthly Magazine, Nov. 1856).
  • "The Crystal Bell" (Harper's New Monthly Magazine, Dec. 1856).
  • "A Day Dream" (Harper's Weekly, Feb. 21, 1857).
  • "Broadway Bedeviled" (Putnam's Monthly Magazine, Mar. 1857).
  • "Uncle and Nephew" (Harper's New Monthly Magazine, Mar. 1857).
  • "The Comet and I" (Harper's Weekly, May 23, 1857).
  • "My Wife's Tempter" (Harper's Weekly, Dec. 12, 1857).
  • "The Diamond Lens" (The Atlantic Monthly, Jan. 1858).
  • "From Hand to Mouth" (The New York Picayune, 1858).
  • "The Golden Ingot" (The Knickerbocker, or New-York Monthly Magazine, Aug. 1858).
  • "The Lost Room" (Harper's New Monthly Magazine, Sep. 1858).
  • "Jubal, the Ringer" (The Knickerbocker, or New-York Monthly Magazine, Sep. 1858).
  • "Three of a Trade; or, Red Little Kriss Kringle" (Saturday Press, Dec. 25, 1858).
  • "What Was It? A Mystery" (Harper's New Monthly Magazine, Mar. 1859).
  • "The Wondersmith" (The Atlantic Monthly, Oct. 1859).
  • "Mother of Pearl" (Harper's New Monthly Magazine, Feb. 1860).
  • "The Child That Loved a Grave" (Harper's New Monthly Magazine, Apr. 1861).
  • "Tommatoo" (Harper's New Monthly Magazine, Aug. 1862).
  • "How I Lost My Gravity" (Harper's New Monthly Magazine, May 1864).

Poetry

  • "Oh! Give a Desert Life to Me" (The Nation, Dublin, Mar. 15, 1845).
  • "Loch Ina, A Beautiful Salt-Water Lake, in the County of Cork" (The Nation, Dublin, Jul. 26, 1845).
  • "The Famine" (The Nation, Dublin, Mar. 7, 1846).
  • "Excelsior" (The Nation Dublin, Mar. 13, 1847).
  • "Forest Thoughts" (The Cork Magazine, Dec. 1848).
  • "The Lonely Oak" (The Parlour Magazine, Jul 12, 1851).
  • "The Spectral Shirt" (The Lantern, Jun. 5, 1852).
  • "Madness" (The American Whig Review, Aug. 1852).
  • "Pallida" (The American Whig Review, Sep. 1852).
  • "The Song of the Immortal Gods" (The American Whig Review, Sep. 1852).
  • "The Old Knight's Wassail" (The American Whig Review, Sep. 1852).
  • "The Shadow by the Tree" (The American Whig Review, Oct. 1852).
  • "Oinea" (The American Whig Review, Dec. 1852).
  • "Sir Brasil's Falcon" (United States Magazine and Democratic Review, Sep. 1853).
  • "The Heath" (The Evening Post, Oct. 19, 1855).
  • "An Episode" (The Evening Post, May. 1, 1856).
  • "By the Alders" (The Home Journal, Oct. 25, 1856, New York, (Vol. 43, Issue 559).
  • "How the Bell Rang (July 4, 1776)" (Harper's Weekly, Jul. 4, 1857).
  • "The Ghosts" (The Knickerbocker, or New-York Monthly Review, Jan. 1859).
  • "The Midnight March" (The History of the Seventh Regiment, edited by Colonel Emmons Clark, Vol. II, N.Y., 1890).
  • "The Man at the Door" (The Knickerbocker, or New-York Monthly Review, Jan. 1861).

Essays

  • "Literature as a Profession-Difficulties of Writers" (The New York Times, Nov. 1852).
  • "The Two Skulls" (Harper's New Monthly Magazine, Feb. 1853).
  • "The Way to Get Burried" (The New York Daily Times, Mar. 19, 1853).
  • "Bird Gossip" (Harper's New Monthly Magazine, Nov. 1855).

Collections

  • Winter, William, ed. (1881). The Poems and Stories of Fitz James O'Brien. Boston: James R. Osgood and Co.
  • ___. (1893). The Diamond Lens with Other Stories by Fitz-James O'Brien. New York: Charles Scribner's Sons.
  • O'Brien, Edward J., ed. (1925). Collected Stories by Fitz-James O'Brien. New York: Albert and Charles Boni.
  • Seldes, Gilbert, ed. (1932). The Diamond Lens and Other Stories by Fitz-James O'Brien. Illustrations by Ferdinand Huszti Howath. New York: William Edwin Rudge.
  • Salmonson, Jessica Amanda, ed. (1988). The Supernatural Tales of Fitz-James O'Brien, Vol. One: Macabre Tales. New York: Doubleday.
  • ___. (1988). The Supernatural Tales of Fitz-James O'Brien, Vol. Two: Dream Stories and Fantasies. New York: Doubleday.
  • Kime, Wayne R., ed. (2003). Fitz-James O'Brien: Selected Literary Journalism, 1852–1860. Selinsgrove, Pennsylvania: Susquehanna University Press,
  • Salmonson, Jessica Amanda, ed. (2008). The Wondersmith and Others. Ashcroft, British Columbia: Ash-Tree Press.
  • Hayes, Michael, ed. (2010). The Fantastic Tales of Fitz-James O'Brien. London: John Calder Press.
  • Kime, Wayne R., ed. (2011). Behind the Curtain: Selected Fiction of Fitz-James O'Brien, 1853–1860. Newark: University of Delaware Press.
  • ___. (2012) Thirteen Stories by Fitz-James O'Brien: The Realm of the Mind. Newark: University of Delaware Press.
  • Irish, John P., ed. (2025). Fitz-James O'Brien: An Arabian Night-mare and Others (1848–1854). Dublin, Ireland: Swan River Press,
  • ___. (2025). Fitz-James O'Brien: The Diamond Lens and Others (1855–1858). Dublin, Ireland: Swan River Press,
  • ___. (2025). Fitz-James O'Brien: What Was It? and Others (1858–1864). Dublin, Ireland: Swan River Press;
  • ___. (2026). Fitz-James O'Brien: The Lost Room and other Speculative Fiction. (Classics of Gothic Horror). New York: Hippocampus Press (forthcoming).

References

Further reading

  • Anderson, Douglas A. "Questioning Attributions of Stories: Supposedly by Fitz-James O'Brien". The Green Book: Writings on Irish Gothic, Supernatural and Fantastic Literature. Issue 23 (2024): 22–32.
  • Bleiler, Richard. "Fitz-James O'Brien (1828–1862)". The Green Book: Writings on Irish Gothic, Supernatural and Fantastic Literature. Issue 18 (2021): 37–51.
  • Burke, Michael. "Fitz-James O'Brien". New York Irish History. Volume 20 (2006): 30–37.
  • Chartier, Cecile. "An Inquiry into the Narrator's Psychological Conundrum in O'Brien's 'What Was It? A Mystery In Seeing the Unseen: Responses to Fitz-James O'Brien's 'What Was It? A Mystery, 109–118. Oxford: The Onslaught Press, 2014.
  • Clareson, Thomas D. "Fitz-James O'Brien". In Supernatural Fiction Writers: Fantasy and Horror, Vol. 2, edited by E. F. Bleiler. New York: Charles Scribner's Sons, 1985: 717–722.
  • Cornwell, Neil. "Gothic and Its Origins in East and West: Vladimir Odoevsky and Fitz-James O'Brien". In Exhibited by Candlelight: Sources and Developments in the Gothic Tradition. Amsterdam: Rodopi, 1995: 116–128.
  • Corstorphine, Kevin. "Fitz-James O'Brien: The Seen and the Unseen". The Green Book: Writings on Irish Gothic, Supernatural and Fantastic Literature. Issue 5 (2015): 5–25.
  • Dimeo, Steven. "Psychological Symbolism in Three Early Tales of Invisibility". In Riverside Quarterly (Vol. 5, No. 1), MLA-IB, July 1971: 20–27.
  • Dirda, Michael. "Panoply of the Weird". The New York Review (January 15, 2026). Reviewed: Collected Speculative Works: An Arabian Night-mare and Others (1848–1854); The Diamond Lens and Others (1855–1858); What Was It? and Others (1858–1864) by Fitz-James O'Brien, selected and with an introduction by John P. Irish (Dublin: Swan River Press, 3 volumes, 699 pp., €120.00).
  • Eastwood, David R. "O'Brien's Fiddler—Or Melville's?" American Transcendental Quarterly 29 (1976): 39–46.
  • Fanning, Charles. The Irish Voice in America: 250 Years of Irish-American Fiction. Kentucky: The University Press of Kentucky, 2000.
  • Fennell, Jack. "Mad Science and the Empire: Fitz-James O'Brien and Robert Cromie". In Irish Science Fiction. Liverpool: Liverpool University Press, 2014: 32–61.
  • Hoppenstand, Gary. "Robots of the Past: Fitz-James O'Brien's 'The Wondersmith Journal of Popular Culture 27 (Spring 1994): 13–30.
  • Huff, Joyce L. "The Domesticated Monster: Freakishness and Masculinity in Fitz-James O'Brien's 'What Was It?" Nineteenth-Century Gender Studies 4, no. 2, 2008.
  • Irish, John P. "Archaeologies of Madness: Poe and O'Brien On the Genealogy of Nineteenth-Century (Un)Reason". The Edgar Allan Poe Review (forthcoming).
  • ___. "Darkness, Doubles, and Displacement: Uncanny Structures in O'Brien's 'The Lost Room. American Gothic Studies vol. 1, no. 2 (2025): 190–215.
  • ___. "Echoes of the Self: Fitz-James O'Brien's Literary 'Other' as Ontological Inquiry". Penumbra: A Journal of Weird Fiction and Criticism 5 (October 2024): 281–313.
  • ___. "Fitz-James O'Brien Hands in His Chips: His New York Writings on Slavery and the Civil War". New York History 103 (Summer 2022): 104–122.
  • ___. "From Boz to Bedeviled: Madness and Mystery in Dickens, Poe, and O'Brien's Urban Gothic". Penumbra: A Journal of Weird Fiction and Criticism 6 (October 2025): 195–228.
  • ___. "Ireland's Forgotten Poet: Fitz-James O'Brien's Writings in The Nation", SMU Pony Express(Ions) 2021 Edition, August 17, 2020, https://smuponyexpressions.wordpress.com/2020/08/17/irelands-forgotten-poet-fitz-james-obriens-writings-in-the-nation/.
  • ___. Of Nobler Song Than Mine': Social Justice in the Life, Times, and Writings of Fitz-James O'Brien" (2019). SMU Graduate Liberal Studies Theses and Dissertations. https://scholar.smu.edu/simmons_gls_etds/3
  • ___. "Poisoned Imagination: Mysticism, Madness, and Medicine in O'Brien's 'Hasheesh' Tales". Victorian Popular Fictions (forthcoming).
  • ___. "Stories of Genius and Madness: Fitz-James O'Brien's Laboratories of the Mind". The Green Book: Writings on Irish Gothic, Supernatural and Fantastic Literature. Issue 23 (2024): 33–44.
  • Jouanne, Kristine Hoyt. "How Much of a Man is Three Fifths of a Man? Fitz-James O'Brien & the Dred Scott Decision". In Seeing the Unseen: Responses to Fitz-James O'Brien's 'What Was It? A Mystery, 47–66. Oxford: The Onslaught Press, 2014.
  • Kerr, Howard. Mediums, and Spirit-Rappers, and Roaring Radicals: Spiritualism in American Literature, 1850–1900. Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1972.
  • Kime, Wayne R. The Bell Tower': Melville's Reply to a Review", ESQ 22 (1976): 28–38.
  • Lause, Mark A. The Antebellum Crisis and America's First Bohemians. Kent, Ohio: Kent State University Press, 2009.
  • Levin, Joanna. Bohemia in America, 1858 – 1920. Stanford, California: Stanford University Press, 2010.
  • Levin, Joanna and Whitley, Edward (eds). Whitman among the Bohemians. Iowa City: University of Iowa Press, 2014.
  • MacIntyre, Feargus Gwynplaine. "Seeing the Unseen: Creating a Biology and a Biome for Fitz-James O'Brien's Invisible Ghoul". In Seeing the Unseen: Responses to Fitz-James O'Brien's 'What Was It? A Mystery, 69–95. Oxford: The Onslaught Press, 2014.
  • Miller, Tice L. "Fitz-James O'Brien: Irish Playwright and Critic in New York, 1851–1862". Nineteenth Century Theatre Research. 10 (Summer 1982): 21–36.
  • Moskowitz, Sam. "The Fabulous Fantasist—Fitz-James O'Brien". In Explorers of the Infinite: Shapers of Science Fiction. New York: World Publishing Co., 1963: 62–72.
  • Orford, Pete. "Unfamiliar in their Mouths: The Possible Contributions of Fitz-James O'Brien to Household Words". In Charles Dickens and the Mid-Victorian Press, 1850–1870, edited by Hazel Mackenzie and Ben Winyard, 211–231. Buckingham: University of Buckingham Press, 2013.
  • ___. "What are they? The Pseudo-mystery stories of Fitz-James O'Brien". Clues: A Journal of Detection, 30:2, Autumn 2012: 10–18.
  • Parry, Albert. Garrets and Pretenders: Bohemian Life in America from Poe to Kerouac. Mineola, New York: Dover Publications, Inc., 2012.
  • Pattee, Fred Lewis. The Development of the American Short Story: An Historical Survey. New York: Harper & Brothers Publishers, 1923.
  • ___. The Feminine Fifties. New York: D. Appleton-Century Company, 1940.
  • Quinn, Arthur Hobson. "Some Phases of the Supernatural in American Literature". PMLA, Vol. 25, No. 1 (1910): 114–133.
  • Riley, Joseph J. "A Keltic Poe". The Catholic World (March, 1920): 751–762.
  • Satelmajer, Ingrid. "Publishing Pfaff's: Henry Clapp and Poetry in the Saturday Press". In Whitman among the Bohemians, edited by Joanna Levin & Edward Whitley. Iowa City: University of Iowa Press, 2014.
  • Staunton, Mathew D. "Not a Spook: A Personal Response to 'What Was It? A Mystery In Seeing the Unseen: Responses to Fitz-James O'Brien's 'What Was It? A Mystery, 135–165. Oxford: The Onslaught Press, 2014.
  • Sommer, George J. "Some Name Symbolism in the Short Stories of Fitz-James O'Brien". Literary Onomastics Studies 6 (Summer 1979): 50–74.
  • Tauvry, Alexandra. "Invisibility in 'What Was It? A Mystery In Seeing the Unseen: Responses to Fitz-James O'Brien's 'What Was It? A Mystery, 121–132. Oxford: The Onslaught Press, 2014.
  • Westfhal, Gary. The Jules Verne, H.G. Wells, and Edgar Allan Poe Type of Story': Hugo Gernsback's History of Science Fiction". Science Fiction Studies, Vol. 19, No. 3 (Nov., 1992): 340–353.
  • Whitley, Edward. "The Southern Origins of Bohemian New York: Edward Howland, Ada Clare, and Edgar Allan Poe". In The Bohemian South: Creating Countercultures, from Poe to Punk, edited by Shawn Chandler Bingham and Lindsey A. Freeman. Chapel Hill, North Carolina: University of North Carolina Press, 2017.
  • Wentworth, Michael. "A Matter of Taste: Fitz-James O'Brien's 'The Diamond Lens' and Poe's Aesthetic of Beauty" American Transcendental Quarterly 2 (December 1988): 271–284.
  • Wolle, Francis. Fitz-James O'Brien: A Literary Bohemian of the Eighteen-Fifties. Boulder, Colorado: University of Colorado, 1944.
  • ___. Violina' by Fitz-James O'Brien: A Manuscript Typical of His Technique". University of Colorado Studies. Series B (Studies in the Humanities) 2 (October 1945): 328–336.