William John Fitzpatrick
William John Fitzpatrick (31 August 1830 – 24 December 1895) was an Irish historian. Life 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, County 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 of the latter 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;