Percy Hetherington Fitzgerald (1834 - 1925) was a British author and critic, painter and sculptor. He was born in Ireland at Fane Valley, County Louth, educated at Stonyhurst College, Lancashire, and at Trinity College, Dublin. He was called to the Irish bar and was for a time crown prosecutor on the northeastern circuit.
After moving to London, he became a contributor to Charles Dickens's magazine,
Household Words, and later dramatic critic for the
Observer and the
Whitehall Review. Among his many writings are numerous biographies and works relating to the history of the theatre. He wrote:
- Life of Sterne (1864)
- Charles Lamb (1866)
- Life of David Garrick (1868)
- Life of George IV (1881)
- The Kembles; Life of William IV (1884)
- Lives of the Sheridans (1886)
- Life of James Boswell (of Auchinleck) with an Account of His Sayings, Doings, and Writings (1891)
- Henry Irving: A Record of Twenty Years at the Lyceum (1893)
- Boswell's Autobiography (1912)
- The Romance of the English Stage (1874)
- A New History of the English Stage (1882)
- Memories of Charles Dickens (1914)
- Worldlyman (1914)
- Memoirs of an Author (London, 1895)
He is buried at Glasnevin Cemetery, Dublin.