Search >> Shanly (Shanley), Charles Dawson (1811-1875)

Journalist, Editor, Essayist, Poet, Illustrator, Playwright.

Charles Dawson Shanly emigrated to New York City from Ireland via Canada and was working as the Assistant Secretary of the Department of Public Works in 1857. In New York City during the late 1850s and 1860s, Shanly was productive as a journalist and editor at such publications as Vanity Fair, Mrs. Grundy, the New York Leader, the Atlantic Monthly, and the New York Saturday Press. An artist and poet as well as a journalist, Shanly garnered limited but not negligible notoriety with his publications A Jolly Bear and his Friends and The Monkey of Porto Bello (both 1866). He also may have written a burlesque, Cinderella, that debuted at the Winter Garden on September 9, 1861 (Odell 7:389).

Junius Browne contends that Shanly was part of the "fraternity" that met at Pfaff’s restaurant, that "had late suppers, and were brilliant with talk over beer and pipes for several years." Browne claims "Those were merry and famous nights, and many bright conceits and witticisms were discharged over the festive board" (156-7). William Winter describes Shanly as "a charming essayist and graceful poet, quaint in character, sweet in temperament, modest and gentle in bearing" (Old Friends 64-65). He goes on to say that Shanly was "a much loved companion . . . modest, silent, patient, reticent--everything that is meant by the name of gentleman” (94-95).

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References & Biographical Resources

Quelqu'un [Winter, William]. "Dramatic Feuilleton." New-York Saturday Press. 15 Sep. 1860: 3. [more about this work]

Quelqu'un mentions that one of his songs is featured in The Monkey Boy at Laura Keene's Theatre (3). [pages: 3]

Arnold, George. "O'Brien's Personal Characteristics." The Poems and Stories of Fitz-James O'Brien; Collected and Edited, with a Sketch of the Author. Ed. Winter, William. Boston: James R. Osgood and Company, 1881. xlvi - liii. [more about this work]

Winter includes an appendix in which he eulogizes Shanly.

Browne, Junius Henri. The Great Metropolis; A Mirror of New York. Hartford: American Publishing, 1869. 700 p. [more about this work]

Browne describes him as "a well-known litterateur" and a contributor to Vanity Fair and other contemporary publications (156).

He was part of the "fraternity" that met at Pfaff's resturant, that "had late suppers, and were brilliant with talk over beer and pipes for several years." Browne claims "Those were merry and famous nights, and many bright conceits and witticisms were discharged over the festive board" (156-7). [pages: 156-157]

Congdon, Charles T. Reminiscences of a Journalist. Boston: James R. Osgood, 1880. [more about this work]

[pages: 345]

Epstein, Daniel Mark. Lincoln and Whitman: Parallel Lives in Civil War Washington. New York: Random House Trade Paperbacks, 2004. 379 p. [more about this work]

Epstein provides an alternate spelling of his last name as "Shanley" [pages: 55]

Figaro [Clapp, Henry Jr.]. "Dramatic Feuilleton." New York Saturday Press. 26 Aug. 1865: 56-57. [more about this work]

Figaro lists Shanly as one of the parties involved in the Saturday Press (56). [pages: 56]

Figaro [Clapp, Henry Jr.]. "Dramatic Feuilleton." New-York Saturday Press. 19 May 1866: 4, 5. [more about this work]

Figaro writes that Shanly and Robert Heller were with him the night he caught "enthusiasm" at a performance of Belphagor. Shanly also caught "enthusiasm" that evening (4). [pages: 4,5]

"General gossip of authors and writers." Current Literature. 1888: 476-480. [more about this work]

Mentioned as one of the Bohemians at Pfaff's "gossiped" about by Rufus B. Wilson in a "reminiscent letter to the Galveston News." [pages: 479]

Lalor, Eugene T. The Literary Bohemians of New York City in the Mid-Nineteenth Century. Ph.D. Dissertation, St. John's University, 1977. 364 p. [more about this work]

Described by Lalor as a "tangential figure" "noted mainly for his gentlemanly demeanor, writer of essays and poetry" (3). [pages: 3]

"Literary News." The Literary World. 1 May 1873: 189-192. [more about this work]

A member of Clapp's "cabinet" in the "Kingdom of Bohemia" and at the Saturday Press. [pages: 192]

Mott, Frank Luther. A History of American Magazines, Volume II: 1850-1865. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1938. [more about this work]

A writer for The Saturday Press. [pages: 39]

O'Brien, Fitz-James. The Poems and Stories of Fitz-James O'Brien. Collected and Edited, with a Sketch of the Author, by William Winter. Ed. William Winter. Boston: J.R. Osgood and Co., 1881. 485 p. [more about this work]

Winter includes an appendix in which he eulogizes Shanly.

Odell, George Clinton. Annals of the New York Stage: Volume VII (1857-1865). New York: Columbia University Press, 1931. [more about this work]

Wrote a burlesque Cinderealla that debuted at the Winter Garden Sept. 9, 1861. Ada Clifton was a member of the cast. [pages: 389]

Rawson, A. L. "A Bygone Bohemia." Frank Leslie's Popular Monthly. 1896. 96-107. [more about this work]

[pages: 100]

Seitz, Don Carlos. Artemus Ward (Charles Farrar Browne): A Biography and Bibliography. NY: Harper & Brothers, 1919. [more about this work]

Seitz names Wood, Mullen, and Shanly as staff members at Vanity Fair who were inspirations for characters in Artemus Ward's Woshy-Boshy. [pages: 90, 97, 173, 174, 221, 278, 282]

Stansell, Christine. "Whitman at Pfaff's: Commercial Culture, Literary Life and New York Bohemia at Mid-Century." Walt Whitman Quarterly Review. 10.3 (1993): 107-126. [more about this work]

He is listed as one of the Pfaffian writers that "have fallen into obscurity." Stansell wonders how much influence these writers weilded on Whitman's literary career (108). [pages: 108]

"The Young Men of the New York Press." The Independent. 7 Jun. 1866: 4. [more about this work]

“It is a striking fact that the number of young men prominently connected with the New York press as writers is greater now than at any former period… the chief editorial work in these journals is done by men between the years of twenty-five and forty” (4).

“Charles D. Gardette, John Alden, Barry Gray, C.D. Shanley, and Dr. Stiles of the Historical Magazine, might all be much older and still young” (4).
[pages: 4]

Wilson, James Grant and John Fiske, eds. Appletons' Cyclopaedia of American Biography, Volume V, Pickering-Sumter. New York: D. Appleton & Co., 1888. [more about this work]

[pages: 481]

Wilson, Rufus Rockwell and Otilie Erickson Wilson. New York in Literature; The Story Told in the Landmarks of Town and Country. Elmira, NY: Primavera Press, 1947. 372 p. [more about this work]

[pages: 63]

Wilson, Rufus Rockwell. New York: Old & New; Its Story, Streets, and Landmarks. Philadelphia: J.B. Lippincott & Co., 1903. [more about this work]

[pages: 140]

Winter, William. Old Friends; Being Literary Recollections of Other Days. New York: Moffat, Yard and Company, 1909. 407 p. [more about this work]

He is listed by Winter as one of the Bohemians who frequented Pfaff's Cave (88).

Winter comments on Shanly's talent: "His poems called 'The Briar Wood Pipe' and 'Rifleman, Shoot Me a Fancy Shot' ought to long preserve his memory, and perhaps they will. To him it was a matter of indifference. I have never known a writer who was so abolutely careless of literary reputation: indeed, it was not until we had been acquainted for several months that I learned that he had written anything" (94-95).

Winter claims that Shanly never discussed his writings with him until Shanly was preparing to leave New York for Florida in 1875. During this conversation, Shanly asked Winter to be his "literary executor" in the event a publisher ever wanted to publish his works. Shanly died in Florida, April 14, 1875 (95).

In response to Howells' criticisms of the Bohemians and in a discussion of their writing, Winter states: "Revelry requires money: at the time Mr. Howells met those Bohemians, -- with the 'damp locks' and the 'frenzied eyes,' -- it is probably that the group did not possess enough money among them all to buy a quart bottle of champagne. Furthermore, they were writers of remarkable quality, and they were under the stringent necessity of working continually and very hard: and it seems pertinent to suggest that such a poem, for instance, as George Arnold's 'Old Pedagogue,' or Fitz-James O'Brien's Ode in commemoration of Kane, or Charles Dawson Shanly's 'Walker of the Snow,' is not to be produced from under the stimulation of alcohol. Literature is a matter of brains, not drugs. It would be equally just and sensible for American criticism to cherish American literature, and to cease from carping about the infirmities, whether actual or putative, of persons dead and gone, who can no longer defend themselves" (93).

Of the poets associated with the Bohemian period, Winter states that Shanly's name is one among a list of "names that shine, with more or less lustre, in the scroll of American poets, and recurrence to their period affords opportunity for correction of errors concerning it, which have been conspicuously made" (292).

C.D. Shanly is listed as one of the "friendly contributors" to the "Saturday Press," who "were glad to furnish articles for nothing, being friendly toward the establishment of an absolutely independent critical paper, a thing practically unknown in those days" (294-295). [pages: 64-65,88,93,94-95,292,294-295]