Charles Robert Maturin

(Charles Robert Maturin, also known as C.R. Maturin (25 September 1782 30 October 1824) was a writer of gothic plays and novels. He was born in Dublin and attended Trinity College, Dublin. Shortly after being ordained as curate of Loughrea, County Galway, in 1803, he became Anglican Curate of St. Peter's Church in Dublin and met and married singer Henrietta Kingsbury, a sister of Sarah Kingsbury whose daughter, Jane Francesca Wilde was the mother of Oscar Wilde. Thus Charles Maturin was Oscar Wilde's great-uncle by marriage. Wilde discarded his own name and adopted the name of Maturin's novel Melmoth the Wanderer when he arrived in Dieppe, France, and lived out his remaining days known as 'Sebastian Melmoth'.[2]
Maturin s first three works were published under the pseudonym Dennis Jasper Murphy. They caught the attention of Sir Walter Scott, who recommended Maturin's work to Lord Byron. With the help of these two Bertram (first staged on 9 May 1816 at the Drury Lane for 22 nights) with Edmund Kean starring in the lead role as Bertram.. Charles Robert Maturin died in Dublin on 30 October 1824. Honoré de Balzac and Charles Baudelaire later expressed fondness for Maturin's work. The play Bertram; or The Castle of St. Aldobrand was adapted in French by Charles Nodier and Isidore Justin Severin Taylor (Bertram, ou le Chateau de St. Aldobrand, 1821). This version was the source of the opera Il pirata, libretto by Felice Romani, music by Vincenzo Bellini, premiered at La Scala of Milan in 1827.
NovelsThe Fatal Revenge; or, the Family of Montorio (1807); The Wild Irish Boy (1808); The Milesian Chief (1812); Women; or, Pour Et Contre; a Tale (1818); Melmoth the Wanderer (1820); The Albigenses (1824); The Albigenses (1824) and Leixlip Castle (1825)
PlaysBertram; or The Castle of St. Aldobrand (1816); Manuel (1817); Fredolfo (1819) and Osmyn the Renegade (published posthumously in 1830, but in rehearsal at Covent Garden in 1822)
PoemsThe Universe (1821)