Name Michael Mulhall | Role Author | |
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Died 1900, Dublin, Republic of Ireland Books The Dictionary of Statistics, Mulhall's Dictionary of Statistics, Rio Grande Do Sul and Its Germa, Handbook of the River Plate Rep, Industries and Wealth of Nations | ||
Michael George Mulhall (1836-1900) was an Irish author, statistician, economist and newspaper editor. He co-founded the Buenos Aires Standard, which in 1862 became the first English-language newspaper to be published daily in South America. He co-authored the first English-language book published in that continent, The Handbook of the River Plate, a work that went to six editions, was widely consulted by immigrants and is now a historical sourcebook. His Dictionary of Statistics (1883 and later editions) became a standard work of reference.
Life
Mulhall was born on 29 September 1836 in Dublin, Ireland, the third son of Thomas Mulhall. He was educated for the priesthood at the Irish College, Rome, but not having the vocation emigrated to Argentina to work with his brother Edward Thomas Mulhall, then a large sheep farmer in that country. In 1861 the Mulhall brothers founded the Buenos Aires Standard, which next year became a daily; it was the preferred newspaper of the Anglo-Argentine community and claimed to be the only English-language daily newspaper to be published south of the equator. (A third brother Francis Healey Mulhall also emigrated to Argentina and founded the ‘’Southern Cross’’, a newspaper of the Irish-Argentine community.) In 1878 (another source says 1868) Mulhall married Marion McMurrough Murphy, herself an author (Between the Amazon and the Andes; Explorers in the New World) who cooperated with him closely on his statistical work. He died in Dublin on 13 December 1900.