E.P. Kinsella was Born Patrick Russell Edmund Kinsella in Liverpool in 1874. His father was the Irish entertainer and music hall manager Pat Kinsella who used to be famous enough to get mentioned by James Joyce in his Ulysses as the former owner of the Harp Theatre in Dublin. His son, Edward Patrick Kinsella, stayed connected to the theatre, but not as a performer or manager, but as an artist, designing a great number of posters for theatre productions, most of them published by David Allen & Sons and a much smaller number by John Waddington. Many of those poster were also issued as postcards. They constitute the bulk of E.P. Kinsella’s postcard output. I have around 80 of these in my collection, but I’m sure there are more. There is also a set of write-aways published in the “All British” Aldine Series, and four sets of six cards each published by Langsdorff & Co. that show children doing various sporting activities (tennis, cycling, cricket, and football).

Just like Dudley Buxton, Kinsella also became interested in the then new medium of film. In 1917 he formed (with Horace Morgan) the Kinsella & Morgan Film Company and began producing cartoons under the banner of Kincartoons, as well as live-action shorts. At last two of those short films featured the music hall comedian George Robey who was a friend of Kinsella’s. The company didn’t last long, though, and ceased production only a year later. After the war, Kinsella continued to design posters for theatre productions and from 1920 onwards also for films. He died in Shoreham-by-Sea in 1936.