American poet, born at Norfolk, VA. He was educated for the priesthood in the Roman Catholic Church, and after his ordination was a chaplain in the Confederate army. To the cause which that army represented he was passionately devoted, and when it was lost his lyric, The Conquered Banner, found an echo in the hearts of thousands in the South, while it elicited a response from Lord Houghton in England. Father Ryan went to New Orleans in 1865, and there, besides clerical duty, edited a religious paper. Afterwards he removed to Knoxville, to Augusta, GA, and to Mobile, where he had charge of a church for some years. In 1880 at Baltimore he published a volume of his Poems, Patriotic, Religious and Miscellaneous, which had already separately had wide circulation. Thereafter he wandered restlessly from place to place in the South, sometimes lecturing and at intervals writing a Life of Christ, which was left incomplete at his death. He died at Louisville, KY, on the 22nd of April 1886. See also Literary Criticism.
