author
William MacOubrey
1800–1884
An Irish doctor, barrister, and playwright, he led an unusually varied life that moved from medicine and law into literature and homeopathy. His surviving work offers a glimpse of a 19th-century writer whose interests ranged from classical medical study to historical drama.
1 Audiobook
Drake; or, the Transfer of the Trident: A National Drama
by William MacOubrey
About the author
Born in 1800, William MacOubrey was an Irish physician who studied at Trinity College Dublin and completed a medical dissertation in 1825. Later, he also entered the law, becoming a student of the Middle Temple and being called to the bar in 1839.
MacOubrey is remembered not only for medicine and law but also for his literary work. He wrote Drake; or, the Transfer of the Trident: A National Drama, and his name also survives through a Latin medical dissertation, Dissertatio medica inauguralis de ictero, which has remained accessible through later reprints and digitization.
Biographical sources also describe him as having converted to homeopathy and note his marriage in 1865 to Henrietta Mary Clarke, the stepdaughter of writer George Borrow. That mix of professions and connections makes him an especially interesting minor Victorian figure: a man who seems to have moved comfortably between scholarship, public life, and writing.