William John Fitzpatrick

William John Fitzpatrick (31 August 1830 – 24 December 1895) was an Irish historian.

He was born at Thomas Street, Dublin. His father, John FitzPatrick, was a successful merchant or trader who left his son a competence. FitzPatrick was educated first at a Protestant school, and later at Clongowes Wood College, co. Kildare, the well-known Jesuit School. He early displayed a taste for recondite and somewhat morbid investigation into the secret history of eminent personages. In 1855 appeared his first book, The Life, Times, and Contemporaries of Lord Cloncurry; the style was 'puerile, involved, and turgid,' revealing a defect which the author never overcame. But his next book, The Life and Times of Bishop Doyle (1861), was much more successful, and, besides giving a vivid picture of a powerful personality, it provides a useful contribution to Irish nineteenth-century history.

On 3 November 1855, FitzPatrick commenced a series of letters to Notes and Queries, 'Who wrote the Waverley Novels ?' It was a weak attempt to foster a charge of unacknowledged plagiarism on Sir Walter Scott, and to claim for the novelist's brother, Thomas Scott, the chief credit for a large part of the famous Waverley series; but after four letters had appeared, the editor declined to publish any more. FitzPatrick continued to pursue his theory with pertinacity, and in 1856 published his material as a pamphlet. It reached a second edition in the same year. His hopeless claim in behalf of Thomas Scott was repudiated in a letter to the Times of 5 June 1857 by the three daughters of that gentleman. In 1859, FitzPatrick published The Friends, Foes, and Adventures of Lady Morgan, and in 1860 Lady Morgan, her Career, Literary and Personal; these were followed by Anecdotal Memoirs of Archbishop Whately (1864).

In his Lord Edward Fitzgerald, or Notes on the Cornwallis Papers (1859), FitzPatrick first hit upon the vein of inquiry which he afterwards worked with conspicuous success that of investigating the inner history of Ireland before the union. In 1866, in The Sham Squire, he followed up the story of Lord Edward FitzGerald's betrayal. Upwards of sixteen thousand copies were sold. In 1867, in Ireland before the Union, he pursued the same subject; but this volume was much less successful than its predecessor. It contains, however, some curious extracts from the privately printed diary of John Scott, 1st Earl of Clonmell.

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