Justin Huntly McCarthy was an Irish author, historian, and nationalist politician. From 1884 until 1892, he was a Member of Parliament (MP), serving in the United Kingdom's House of Commons. He was the son of Justin McCarthy (1830-1912). Because both father and son were writers, historians, and Members of Parliament, they are sometimes mistaken in lists and compilations. McCarthy was first elected to Parliament in a by-election held on June 12, 1884, when he was returned unopposed as the Home Rule League member for Athlone following the death of Liberal MP Sir John James Ennis. The Redistribution of Seats Act of 1885 eliminated Athlone's parliamentary borough status, and McCarthy ran unopposed for the Irish Parliamentary Party in the borough of Newry in County Down in the 1885 general election. He was re-elected in 1886 by a large margin over Liberal Unionist Reginald Saunders, but did not run in the 1892 election. McCarthy wrote a range of novels, plays, poems, and short stories. He was formerly married to actress Cissie Loftus. They married in Edinburgh in 1894, and after splitting up in 1899, she played Katherine de Vaucelles, the heroine in If I Were King, in 1901.
