Thomas Leland

Thomas Leland (1722–1785) was an Irish historian, translator and academic and the author of the early gothic novel Longsword, Earl of Salisbury: An Historical Romance, published in 1762.[1][2] Longsword is set in Gascony and in England, during the reign of Henry III of England. [3]

He was born in Dublin and educated at Thomas Sheridan's school[4] and then at Trinity College, where he became Professor of Oratory in 1763. He translated the Orations of Demosthenes in three volumes and wrote a life of Philip of Macedon in 1758. He wrote an influential History of Ireland from the Invasion of Henry II in 1773. His portrait, by John Dean, is held by the National Portrait Gallery.[5]

Leland was made a fellow of Trinity College Dublin in 1746.[4] He was ordained a Church of Ireland priest in 1748, he served as vicar in Bray, Co. Wicklow, in 1773 he was appointed Vicar of St. Ann's Church, Dawson Street, in Dublin.[6]

Notes
  1. Leland
  2. "...some would argue that Thomas Leland's Longsword, Earl of Salisbury (1762) -subtitled "A Historical Romance"-is really the first Gothic novel". Rictor Norton, Gothic Readings : the first wave, 1764-1840. London. Leicester University Press, 2000. ISBN 0718502167 (p.1)
  3. Fiona Price, Reinventing Liberty: Nation, Commerce and the British Historical Novel from Walpole to Scott. Edinburgh, Edinburgh University Press, 2016. ISBN 9781474402972 (p.28)
  4. A life - Thomas Leland(1722-1785)
  5. The Concise Oxford Companion to Irish Literature. Oxford University Press.
  6. Church of Ireland Notes, Irish Times, 4 August 2012.

References
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