Dion Boucicault
writer
- Birth name:
- Dionysius Lardner Boursiquot
- Born:
- 1822-12-26, Dublin, Ireland, UK [now Republic of Ireland]
- Died:
- 1890-09-18, New York City, New York, USA
- Professions:
- writer
Biography
Dion Boucicault first drew breath on 26 December 1822 amid the gas-lamps and Georgian brickwork of Dublin, then still under the British flag. A dramatist of restless energy, he stitched the cadence of Irish speech into the fabric of popular theatre, gifting posterity such stage favourites as the quick-witted Conn, the Shaughraun (1912), the rebel-hearted Arrah-Na-Pogue (1911) and the tear-stained romance Kathleen Mavourneen (1919). Offstage, his private life read like one of his own three-act comedies: he successively shared the marital spotlight with Louise Thorndyke, the versatile Agnes Robertson, and the French-born Anne Guiot. The final curtain fell on 18 September 1890 in the electric glare of New York City, the adopted metropolis where Boucicault had spent his last, prolific years.
