Honoré de Balzac and Charles Baudelaire later expressed fondness for Maturin's work, particularly his most famous novel, Melmoth the Wanderer. Maturin, a Chaplain at Oxford University, died in the sinking of RMS Lusitania in 1915.Ĭharles Robert Maturin died in Dublin on 30 October 1824. Forced to support his wife and four children by writing (his salary as curate was £80-90 per annum, compared to the £1000 he made for Bertram), he switched back from playwright to novelist after a string of his plays met with failure.

The Church of Ireland took note of these and earlier criticisms and, having discovered the identity of Bertram's author (Maturin had shed his nom de plume to collect the profits from the play), subsequently barred Maturin's further clerical advancement. Coleridge's comments on Bertram can also be found in 'Biographia Literaria', chapter 23. To make matters worse, Samuel Taylor Coleridge publicly denounced the play as dull and loathsome, and 'melancholy proof of the depravation of the public mind', going nearly so far as to decry it as atheistic. Financial success, however, eluded Maturin, as the play's run coincided with his father's unemployment and another relative's bankruptcy, both of them assisted by the fledgling writer. With the help of these two literary luminaries, the curate's play, Bertram (first staged on at the Drury Lane for 22 nights) with Edmund Kean starring in the lead role as Bertram, saw a wider audience and became a success. They did, however, catch the attention of Sir Walter Scott, who recommended Maturin's work to Lord Byron. His first three works were published under the pseudonym Dennis Jasper Murphy and were critical and commercial failures.

Charles Robert Maturin was an Irish Protestant clergyman (ordained by the Church of Ireland) and a writer of gothic plays and novels.

Melmoth the Wanderer by Charles Maturin