James Lynam Molloy

James Lynam Molloy (19 August 1837 – 4 February 1909) was an Irish composer, poet, and author. His songs were praised by his contemporaries; one said that he “will be remembered, or certainly his songs will, long after the ‘superior’ and so-called ‘art-songs’ of to-day are forgotten.” After leaving the College, he went to the Catholic University in Dublin, graduating in 1858. Further studies brought him to London, Paris, and Bonn, before he settled in London from about 1863 with a lawyer’s degree. Private secretary and war correspondent However, he never practiced law. Instead, he worked as a private secretary to the then attorney general. He was a war correspondent for the London Standard on the Franco-Prussian War and traveled widely, particularly in France. From 1880 he lived in Henley-on-Thames near London. Songs and songwriting Molloy’s first songs date from 1865 when he was 28 years old, but his career really took off with the regular London ballad concerts from the late 1860s and particularly during the 1870s. His most often quoted successes in his own lifetime were songs like Clochette (1867), Thady O’Flynn (1869), Eily’s Reason (1871), Dresden China (1875), Darby and Joan