William Paulet Carey

William Paulet Carey (1759–21 May 1839) was an Irish art critic and publicist, known also as an engraver and dealer. He spent half a century promoting British art, most of his writings being distributed gratuitously.

Carey was born into an Irish Catholic family in Dublin, the brother of John Carey and Mathew Carey. His father Christopher Carey was a baker and newspaper owner. Of two other brothers, James became a newspaper editor in Philadelphia.

Carey studied drawing at the Royal Dublin Society's school. He began life as a painter and then became an engraver. After an accident to his eyes he had to abandon his career in art. He edited in Dublin the Sentimental and Masonic Magazine (1792–95).

In 1791, with his brother James, Carey began to publish Rights of Irishman, or National Evening Star, an Irish nationalist paper that ran to 1795. In 1792 he joined the Dublin Society of the United Irishmen. He associated with William Drennan, whose Address to the Volunteers he published in 1792; and with W. Todd Jones, whose portrait he painted for engraving, and whose Reply to an anonymous writer from Belfast he published, in 1793.

Carey did not fit easily into the Dublin Society. He was unusual in the United Irishmen, for example, in that he took the side of the journeymen in the contemporary labour agitation. Politically, he was aligned with James Napper Tandy and John Binns. He wished to promote the influence of the Catholic Society of Dublin, formed in 1791 and a radical group of about 40, and displace the traditional leadership group of Catholics of high social rank. A clash with Theobald Mackenna made his first application to join the United Irishmen problematic.

In November 1792 Carey reprinted from the United Irishmen's Northern Star, published in Belfast, a paragraph on local rejoicing at the outcome of the Battle of Valmy, and Arthur Wolfe warned him of a prosecution for seditious libel. The printing of Drennan's Address in December caused Carey further trouble with the Dublin administration. His creditors called in their debts, he sold the Star to Randal McAllister, and went into hiding. An attempt to get help from the United Irishmen led to his arrest and release on bail in March 1793.

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