KELLY, HUGH (1739-1777), Irish dramatist and poet, son of a Dublin publican, was born in 1739 at Killarney. He was apprenticed to a staymaker, and in 1760 went to London. Here he worked at his trade for some time, and then became an attorney's clerk. He contributed to various newspapers, wrote pamphlets for the booksellers, and a novel, once famous, Memoirs of a Magdalen, or the History of Louisa Mildmay (2 vols., 1767). In 1766 he published an anonymous poem, Thespis; or, A Critical Examination into the Merits of All the Principal Performers belonging to Drury Lane Theatre. Kelly's first comedy, False Delicacy, written in prose, was produced by Garrick at Drury Lane on Jan. 23, 1768. The piece had a great vogue in London, and in French and Portuguese versions it drew crowded houses in Paris and Lisbon.
Kelly was a journalist in the pay of Lord North, and therefore hated by the party of John Wilkes, especially as being the editor of the Public Ledger. His Thespis had also made him many enemies ; and Mrs. Clive refused to act in his pieces. The pro duction of his second comedy, A Word to the Wise (Drury Lane, 3rd of March 1770), occasioned a riot in the theatre, repeated at the second performance, and the piece had to be abandoned.
His other plays are: Clementina (Covent Garden, Feb. 23, 1771), a blank verse tragedy, given out to be the work of a "young American Clergyman" in order to escape the opposition of the Wilkites ; The School for Wives (Drury Lane, Dec. 11, 1773), a prose comedy given out as the work of Major (after wards Sir William) Addington; a two-act piece, The Romance of an Hour (Covent Garden, Dec. 2, borrowed from Mar montel's tale L'Amitie d l'epreuve; and an unsuccessful comedy, The Man of Reason (Covent Garden, Feb. 9, 1776). Kelly gave up literature for law in 1774. He died in poverty on Feb. 3, 1777.
See The Works of Hugh Kelly, to which is prefixed the Life of the Author (1778) ; Genest, History of the Stage (v. 163, 3o8, 399, 457, 517). Pamphlets in reply to Thespis are: "Anti-Thespis . . ." (1767) : "The Kellyad . . ." (1767), by Louis Stamma; and "The Rescue or Thespian Scourge . . ." (1767), by John Brown-Smith.