thumb|Illustration of Thomas Colley Grattan by [[Thomas Addis Emmet (1880).]]
Thomas Colley Grattan (1792 – 4 July 1864) was an Irish novelist, poet, dramatist, travel writer, historian and diplomat. Born in Dublin, he was educated for the law, but did not practise. He wrote a few novels, including The Heiress of Bruges (4 volumes, 1830); but his best work was Highways and Byways, a description of his Continental travels, of which he published three series, amounting to eight volumes. He also wrote a history of the Netherlands and books on America. He was for some time British Consul at Boston in the United States and assisted in the negotiations leading to the Webster–Ashburton Treaty in 1842.
Life
Grattan was son of Colley Grattan of Clayton Lodge, County Kildare, a solicitor in Dublin who became a farmer. The family was part of the Anglo-Irish Protestant Ascendancy and Grattan was related to both the Irish politician Henry Grattan and the Duke of Wellington. He was educated in Athy by the Reverend Henry Bristow, after which he was sent to Dublin to study law. He then accepted a commission in the Louth militia. In 1810, while stationed in Waterford, he met the actor Edmund Kean following a performance of Hamlet. The two became friends, and years later Grattan wrote a play for him.
After leaving the army, Grattan decided to take part in the South American wars of independence. He embarked for Bordeaux in 1818, with the intention of taking a ship from there to Venezuela, but on his passage met Eliza O'Donnel. He married her and settled near Bordeaux. It was here that he started as a writer, beginning with Philibert, an octo-syllabic poem in six cantos. Soon after he moved to Paris, where he met Thomas Moore, Washington Irving, Adolphe Thiers, Béranger, Lamartine, and other distinguished literary men, and became a steady contributor to the Westminster Review, Edinburgh Review, the New Monthly Magazine, and other periodicals. His translations from French poets were successful. He also ran a serial of his own, The Paris Monthly Review of British and Continental Literature, by a Society of English Gentlemen. No. 1 came out in January 1822, and No. 15 (April 1823) appears to have been the last issue of this magazine. By Washington Irving's advice he edited notes of some of his tours, and submitted the manuscript to four publishing houses, who all rejected it. This work was Highways and Byways, or Tales of the Roadside,’ which, on its appearance in 1823, dedicated to Washington Irving, made its author's name widely known both in England and on the continent, and was several times reprinted. The second series of these tales came out in 1825, and the third in 1827. Grattan's next public appearance was as the writer of a tragedy, Ben Nazir, the Saracen. This was produced by Kean at Drury Lane Theatre on 21 May 1827, but the actor, through ill-health and domestic misfortunes, broke down, and the play failed with him.