Charles Robert Maturin

Charles Robert Maturin, also known as C.R. Maturin (September 25, 1780 - October 30, 1824), was an Irish Protestant clergyman (ordained in the Irish Church) and writer of Gothic plays and novels. His most famous work is the novel Melmoth the Wanderer. Maturin descended from the Huguenots who found shelter in Ireland, one of which was Gabriel Jacques Maturin, who became dean of St. Patrick's Cathedral, Dublin after Jonathan Swift in 1745. Charles Robert Maturin was born in Dublin and attended Trinity College. Soon after he was appointed curator of the city of Lafrea, County Galway, in 1803, he returned to Dublin as curator of St. Peter's Church. He lived on York Street with his father, William, a postal official, and his mother, Fedelia Watson, and on October 7, 1804, married the famous singer Henrietta Kingsbury. His first three works were Gothic novels published under the pseudonym Dennis Jasper Murphy, and were critical and commercial failures. They, however, attracted the attention of Sir Walter Scott, who recommended the work of Maturin to Lord Byron. With their help, Maturin’s play “Bertram” was put on Drury Lane in 1816 for 22 nights with Edmund Keene in the title role as Bertram. Financial success, however, eluded Maturin, as the play coincided with the unemployment of his father and the bankruptcy of another relative, who was helped by a young writer. To make matters worse, Samuel Taylor Coleridge publicly condemned the play as dull and disgusting, and “a melancholy proof of the corruption of public consciousness”, even to the point of condemning it as atheistic.