The New International Encyclopædia/Donnelly, Ignatius

DON′NELLY, Ignatius (1831-1901). An American journalist, politician, and essayist of eccentric ingenuity. He was born in Philadelphia, studied law there, and was admitted to the bar in 1852, went to Minnesota in 1856, and was elected Lieutenant-Governor of that State in 1859 and 1861. From 1863 to 1869 he was a Representative in Congress. In 1873-78 he edited at Saint Louis The Antimonopolist, a weekly newspaper in support of the Greenback policy, and in 1876 was president of the Antimonopoly convention that nominated Peter Cooper for the Presidency of the United States. For many years he served as a Democrat in both Houses of the Legislature of Minnesota. He was nominated for the Vice-Presidency of the United States in 1898 by the People's Party, and in 1900 by the 'Middle-of-the-Road' wing of that party. Latterly he edited at Minneapolis a journal called The Representative. His Atlantis (1882) attracted attention in unscientific circles by its endeavor to prove that the island of that name once really existed, and was the original seat of civilization. Ragnarök (1883) undertook to explain the geologic formations of the drift age by cometary contact. The Great Cryptogram (1887) sought, by the application of an elaborate word-cipher to the First Folio, to furnish convincing evidence of the Baconian authorship of Shakespeare.