Sir Charles Gavan Duffy was a Catholic Irish Nationalist, Victorian Statesman and self declared 'radical reformer' who founded the influential Irish weekly periodical, the Nation in the early 1840s. In 1845 he was admitted to the Bar. He was a member of the Irish revolutionary groups, The Young Irelanders and the Irish Confederation, some of whom were transported to Van Deimen's Land. Duffy was charged with treason in 1848 and imprisoned but was freed after his fifth trial.
Disillusioned by the unsuccessful political struggle in Ireland, Duffy left for Australia in November 1855 and settled in Melbourne. He practiced as a barrister and then stood for the first parliament under responsible government, becoming a member of the Victorian Legislative Assembly. He had a relatively tumultuous career in politics while in Australia, with religious divisions between Catholics and Protestants causing significant issues. He served as Premier and Chief Secretary of Victoria for one year from June 1871 and was an ardent champion of Federation. He retired from politics in 1880.
Duffy had some poetry published in Ireland before coming to Australia and always considered himself a 'poet-statesman'. The ADB entry states that the collection he edited, The Ballad Poetry of Ireland (1874), contained some of his poetry. The copy sighted, however, does not list him as an included author. Later in life, he wrote a number of historical works, biographies and an autobiography, My Life in Two Hemispheres (1898).
Duffy married three times and had numerous children. All of his wives predeceased him. He left Australia in 1880 and settled in Nice, France, where he died in 1903. Two of his sons, Charles Gavan Duffy and Sir Frank Gavan Duffy (qq.v.) were also significant figures in Australian legal and political life.
