1. Charles James Lever was an Irish novelist and raconteur, whose novels, according to Anthony Trollope, were just like his conversation.
13 Facts About Charles Lever
1. 2.
The character Frank Webber in the novel Charles Lever O'Malley was based on a college friend, Robert Boyle, who later became a clergyman.
3.
Charles Lever loved German student life, and several of his songs, such as "The Pope Charles Lever Loved a Merry Life", are based on student-song models.
4.
Charles Lever had met William Hamilton Maxwell, the titular founder of the genre.
5.
Charles Lever, who strung together his anecdotes late at night after the serious business of his day, was astonished at its success.
6.
Charles Lever sketched with a free hand, wrote, as he lived, from hand to mouth, and the chief difficulty he experienced was that of getting rid of his characters who "hung about him like those tiresome people who never can make up their minds to bid you good night".
7.
In pages of O'Malley and Tom Burke Charles Lever anticipates not a few of the best effects of Marbot, Thibaut, Lejeune, Griois, Seruzier, Burgoyne and the like.
8.
Thackeray suggested London, but Charles Lever required a new field of literary observation and anecdote.
9.
Depressed in spirit as Charles Lever was, his wit was unextinguished; he was still the delight of the salons with his stories, and in 1867, after a few years' experience of a similar kind at Spezia, he was cheered by a letter from Lord Derby offering him the more lucrative consulship of Trieste.
10.
Charles Lever visited Ireland in the following year and seemed alternately in high and low spirits.
11.
Charles Lever was a born raconteur, and had in perfection that easy flow of light description which without tedium or hurry leads up to the point of the good stories of which in earlier days his supply seemed inexhaustible.
12.
Charles Lever's women are mostly roues, romps or Xanthippes; his heroes have too much of the Pickle temper about them and fall an easy prey to the serious attacks of Poe or to the more playful gibes of Thackeray in Phil Fogarty or Bret Harte in Terence Denville.
13.
Charles Lever certainly had no deliberate intention of "lowering the national character".