Gideon Ouseley (24 February 1762 – 13 May 1839)[1] was born into an Anglican gentry family in Dunmore, County Galway.

[2] His father, although a deist, intended that his son enter the clergy,[1] but Ouseley spent much of his childhood in the cabins of peasant neighbours.

[4] Married at age 20, Ouseley led a wild life that dissipated both his own and his wife's fortunes.

[3] Oliver St. John Gogarty wrote an autobiographical novel Tumbling in the Hay and two plays under the pseudonym Gideon Ouseley, A Serious Thing and The Enchanted Trousers.

[6] The writer John Mulvey Ousley was of a later generation of the same family.