David James O'Donoghue (D.J. O'Donoghue) (1866, Chelsea, London - June 27, 1917[1]) was an Irish biographer and editor. He attended a Catholic school and furthered his own education at the British Museum. He began his journalistic work by writing for the Dublin papers upon subjects relating to Irish music, art, and literature. A founder of the Irish Literary Society in London, he was also vice president of the National Literary Society, Dublin, and the compiler of a biographical dictionary, The Poets of Ireland (1891-93; revised edition, 1912), with entries on 2,000 authors. He published also:
O'Donoghue published an edition of J. F. Lalor's writings (1895) and an edition of William Carleton's Traits and Stories of the Irish Peasantry (four volumes, 1896-97). He edited the works of Samuel Lover (six volumes, 1898-99) and the prose works (1903) and poems (1904) of James Clarence Mangan. He wrote biographies on William Carleton (1896) (whose sisters he rescued from poverty), Richard Pockrich (1899), and Robert Emmet (1902).
In 1896 he moved to Dublin. In 1909 he became librarian of University College Dublin. He was co-editor of Catalogue of the Gilbert Library (in Dublin; 1918). William Butler Yeats wrote of him in his Autobiographies (1938).