author
Owen Kildare
1864–1911
Raised in the rough streets of New York, this early 20th-century writer turned hard experience into vivid stories about slum life, survival, and redemption. His best-known work drew directly on his own struggles and helped give readers an unusually intimate picture of the Bowery.
1 Audiobook
My Mamie Rose: The Story of My Regeneration
by Owen Kildare
About the author
Born Owen Frawley Kildare in Manhattan on June 11, 1864, he wrote about the harsh realities of New York City poverty with unusual immediacy. Reference sources describe him as an American writer whose fiction and sketches focused on slum life, especially in lower Manhattan.
Kildare is best remembered for My Mamie Rose: The Story of My Regeneration (published in 1903, and also issued in London as Up from the Slums). Library of Congress authority records identify him as both a journalist and author, and his other books include The Wisdom of the Simple and My Old Bailiwick.
He died on February 4, 1911. Though not as widely known today as some of his contemporaries, his work still stands out for its direct, personal view of life in the Bowery and for the way it blended autobiography, social observation, and storytelling.