Charles Kickham

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Charles Joseph Kickham (9 May 1828–22 August 1882) was an Irish patriot, novelist and poet.

Kickham was born and educated at Mullinahone, County Tipperary. At thirteen he was involved in a gunpowder accident which permanently injured his sight and hearing. Soon after he founded the Mullinahone Young Ireland Confederate Club. Kickham contributed articles to James Stephens' The Irish People at this time and later became that paper's editor in which capacity he was arrested in 1865 for writing 'treasonous' articles. Kickham, nearly blind and almost completely deaf, was tried and sentenced to fourteen years penal servitude. He was imprisoned in Portland and Woking prisons where he wrote his first novel Sally Kavanagh (1869).

Kickham was released in 1870 due to ill-health. He lived in Blackrock, County Dublin where he continued to write poetry and novels. His Knocknagow; or The Homes of Tipperary (1879) was a phenomenal success, making Kickham the most popular Irish novelist of the 19th century.

Kickham was President of the Supreme Council of the Irish Republican Brotherhood at his death.

Kickham's funeral procession was one of the largest ever witnessed in Ireland when he died in 1882 with over 10,000 mourners in attendance.