Frederick Ryan (1876-1913) was an Irish socialist republican playwright and essayist born in Dublin. He was an early member of the Irish Republican Socialist Party (IRSP) founded by James Connolly in 1896, and the first secretary of the Irish National Theatre Society. He produced one play, ‘Laying of the Foundations’ in 1902. Writing regularly for various Irish nationalist newspapers and serving as editor of English-language Egyptian nationalist organs, Ryan was a highly regarded essayist and journalist whose advocacy of socialist Irish nationalism won him both friends, in James Connolly and Francis Sheehy-Skeffington, and foes in Arthur Griffith and Sinn Féin.
