Mr. Dooley (or Martin J. Dooley) is a fictional Irish immigrant bartender created by American journalist and humorist Finley Peter Dunne. Dooley was the subject of many Dunne columns between 1893 and 1915, and again in 1924 and 1926. Dunne's essays contain the bartender's commentary on various topics (often national or international affairs). They became extremely popular during the 1898 Spanish–American War and remained so afterwards; they are collected in several books. The essays are in the form of conversations in Irish dialect between Mr. Dooley, who in the columns owns a tavern in the Bridgeport area of Chicago, and one of the fictional bar's patrons (in later years, usually Malachi Hennessy) with most of the column a monologue by Dooley. The pieces are not widely remembered, but originated lasting sayings such as "the Supreme Court follows the election returns".
Mr. Dooley was invented by Dunne to replace a similar character whose real-life analogue had objected. By having the garrulous bartender speak in dialect and live in an unfashionable area of Chicago, Dunne gained a freedom of expression he often did not have in standard English. The first four years of the weekly column made Mr. Dooley popular in Chicago, but little noticed elsewhere. Dunne was a rapidly rising newspaperman, and the pieces mainly appeared in the Chicago paper which he worked for. During that time, Dunne detailed the daily life of Bridgeport through Dooley's lips, painting a portrait of ethnic urban life unparalleled in 19th-century American literature.
Dunne's bartender came to wider attention with the wartime columns, and the Dooley pieces were soon in newspapers nationwide. Both the columns and the books collecting them gained national acclaim. Beginning around 1905, Dunne had increasing trouble finding time and inspiration for new columns, and they ended in 1915, except for a brief resurrection in the mid-1920s. Even in Dunne's own time (he died in 1936), his work was becoming obscure in part due to his use of dialect, and the unusual spellings that it required have proved a lasting barrier for potential readers.
Chronology
Beginnings
Peter Dunne was born on July 10, 1867, in Chicago, the son of Irish immigrants; he added the first name "Finley", his mother's last name at birth, in his early twenties. A precocious boy, he did well in elementary school but finished last in his high school class of 50, possibly because of the death of his mother, and was sent to work at about age 17 in 1884. Dunne got a menial job on the Chicago Tribune, where superiors soon noticed his street smarts, and made him police reporter. Over the next few years, Dunne worked for several Chicago papers, gaining in salary and responsibility, and by 1888 at age 21 was city editor and a political writer for the Chicago Times.
While at the Times, Dunne may have made his first experiments in Irish dialect: an anonymous police reform series published in January 1889. "Officer Quinn and his Friends" features an Irish-American policeman who digs up a suspicious footprint in the snow. Quinn means to take it to the station but is sidetracked at a saloon, emerging several hours later to find the evidence melted. The writer of the Quinn pieces uses unneeded Irishisms, and his spelling is often awkward. When Dunne took a new job with the Tribune later in 1889, the use of Irish dialect in stories followed him; one account of a conversation between two Irish-American members of the city council is rendered as they would have spoken it. He first signed his name to Irish dialect pieces in the second half of 1890, in a series about real-life Colonel Thomas Jefferson Dolan, a small-time Democratic hanger-on. The series, which ended when Dunne left for the Chicago Herald in late 1890, contains elements of the Dooley stories, including mostly being told from a single perspective (an alter ego for Dunne), as well as painting a detailed portrait of the Irish-American scene. By then, Dunne had polished his use of Irish dialect.