Thomas Dermody Biography

Thomas Dermody (1775–1802), poet, born in Ennis, showed great capacity for learning, but fell into idle and dissipated habits, and threw away his opportunities. He published two books of poems, which after his death were collected as The Harp of Erin. Dermody was an accomplished sonneteer, 56 of his sonnets being published in various works, from his very first 1789 collection "Poems" to those published in 1792 before he went to fight on the Continent, and even a few posthumously published verses in the biography by James Grant Raymond. S.T. Coleridge took an interest in some of his verse which had been included in the popular literary magazine "The Anthologia Hibernica". Dermody also wrote under a number of pseudonyms, notably Mauritius Moonshine, and Marmaduke Myrtle.