Background
Fitzgerald was the son of Colonel John Austen (or Anster) Fitzgerald of the Dutch service and Henrietta Martin, daughter of an Antigua planter and sister of Samuel Martin Member of Parliament. lieutenant appears only one of their children was born after this marriage.
Career
Fitzgerald"s own sister married barrister John Anthony Fonblanque. They were the parents of the Victorian painter John Anster Fitzgerald. Employed until about 1805 in the Navy pay-office Fitzgerald became subject to "an asthma" for the last 30 years of his life and suffered from dropsy.
These complaints made his movements lethargic.
Lord mentioned him in the opening line of his English Bards and Scotch Reviewers: was mocking Fitzgerald"s practice of reciting one of his poems each year, at the annual dinner of the Literary Fund, held at the Freemasons" Tavern. Fitzgerald replied to, though not publicly.
In a copy of English Bards he wrote: I find Lord scorns my Muse, This copy of the poem somehow came into "s possession, and he added a verse reply of his own, dismissing Fitzgerald as a "scribbler." Fitzgerald was also parodied in the Rejected Addresses of James and Horace Smith (1812). Indeed, he suffers the sad fate of being remembered for inspiring the satires of and the Smiths, rather than for his own writings.
Membership
He was long a member of the committee of the Literary Fund and later one of its vice-presidents.