Conway, Frederick William (1781/2–1853), journalist and book collector, was the son of Luke Conway, printer of the Connaught Gazette, a pro-government newspaper published at Loughrea, Co. Galway, for some months in 1797. From 1806 to 1812 he was a major contributor to the Dublin Freeman's Journal, then owned by Philip Whitfield Harvey (qv). He also edited for a while a Dublin weekly, The Messenger, and started the short-lived Dublin Political Review. A printing works was built for him at the back of his house in Dawson Street. In 1814 he succeeded John Magee Jr (qv) as owner and editor of the Dublin Evening Post.
Although Conway had devotedly supported the Catholic Board and been secretary of a committee that for several months in 1810 agitated for repeal of the union between Ireland and Great Britain, he found it prudent to receive subventions from the tory administration at Dublin castle (an average of £230 p.a. between 1818 and 1830) in return for political support. Only in 1824 did he come out openly for catholic relief and never did he support the repeal agitation of Daniel O'Connell (qv). Conway's own politics were whig and so in 1835, when O'Connell formed an alliance with Melbourne, the two Irishmen made their peace. The Dublin Evening Post was always one of the two Dublin papers that catholics mainly read. Conway was himself, however, a protestant, though, according to an obituary in the Northern Whig, he was ‘originally educated to be a Roman catholic priest’ and ‘in his last days returned to the faith in which he had been educated’. He was described by R. R. Madden (qv) as ‘the ablest man ever connected with the Irish press’ and certainly he had great journalistic flair; but the obituarist in his own paper wrote that ‘he never kept an account of receipts or expenditure in his life’.
Conway, who was elected MRIA (24 January 1831), was learned in the humanities; he formed a large collection of books and manuscripts, the sale catalogue of which contained 7,936 lots and listed many works of theological or historical interest (a few of them incunabula). He died, aged seventy-one, on 24 May 1853 at his home, St Kevin's, Rathmines, Dublin, and was buried at Glasnevin cemetery. He had two sons, Frederick and William, and two daughters. A grandson was Sir Frederick Conway Dwyer (1860–1935), president of the RCSI. A marble bust of Conway was in the possession of his son-in-law, Michael Francis Dwyer, registrar of deeds; an oil painting by J. P. Haverty (qv) depicts him flanked by O'Connell and P. V. Fitzpatrick (qv).