author
Henry Jones
1721–1770
Rising from bricklaying to the London stage, this Irish poet and dramatist became known as the “Bricklayer Poet.” His life story is almost as striking as his best-known tragedy, The Earl of Essex.
1 Audiobook
The Earl of Essex: A Tragedy, in Five Acts
by Henry Jones
About the author
Born near Drogheda, County Louth, in 1721, Henry Jones came from humble beginnings and was apprenticed to a bricklayer. While working, he educated himself and began writing verse, attracting the notice of influential local patrons who helped launch his literary career.
That support opened doors in Dublin and then London, where he built a reputation as a poet and playwright. He is best remembered for The Earl of Essex and for the unusual path that earned him the nickname “the Bricklayer Poet.”
Accounts of his later life suggest that early promise did not turn into lasting security, and he died in 1770. Even so, he remains a memorable figure in 18th-century Irish literary history because of both his work and his remarkable rise from manual labor into the literary world.