DALY, AUGUSTIN (1838-1899), American theatrical manager and playwright, was born in Plymouth (N.C.), July 20, 1838. He was dramatic critic for several New York papers from 1859, and he adapted or wrote a number of plays, Under the Gaslight (1867) being his first success. In 1869 he was the man ager of the Fifth Avenue theatre, and in 1879 he built and opened Daly's theatre in New York, and in 1893, Daly's theatre in Lon don. At the former he gathered a company of players, headed by Miss Ada Rehan, which made for it a high reputation, and for them he adapted plays from foreign sources, and revived Shake spearean comedies in a manner before unknown in America. He took his entire company on tour, visiting England, Germany, and France.
Some of the best actors on the American stage have owed their training and first successes to him ; among them Clara Morris, Sara Jewett, John Drew, Fanny Davenport, Maude Adams, and Mrs. Gilbert. Daly was a great book-lover; his valuable library was dispersed by auction after his death, in Paris, June 7, 1899.
Besides plays, original and adapted, he wrote TI%o ff ington: a Trib ute to the Actress and the Woman (1888).