Nineteenth-Century English Labouring–Class Poets
General Editor: John Goodridge
Assistant General Editor: Simon Kövesi
Advisory Editor: David Fairer
Volume Editors: Scott McEathron, John Goodridge and Kaye Kossick
English Labouring-Class Poets, 1700–1900
978 1 85196 763 6: 234x156mm: £275.00/$495.00
Nineteenth Century English Labouring-Class Poets is the first comprehensive collection of works by more than a hundred poets. In the same series as Pickering & Chatto's Eighteenth Century English Labouring Class Poets (2002), the new collection will make available scores of newly edited and annotated texts that have been previously unknown to readers and critics.
While this set features the profoundly important work of relatively familiar labouring-class writers like John Clare, James Hogg, Ebenezer Elliott, Samuel Bamford, Robert Story, Mary Smith, and Samuel Laycock - writers who were crucial in developing and consolidating a coherent, widely recognized, labouring-class tradition - the collection also brings to light the work of dozens of significant labouring-class writers whose poems have been lost or forgotten. Indeed, in many cases these are poets who, though enormously popular in their time, have never been reprinted.
These three volumes trace the remarkable transformations in British culture that occurred over the course of the nineteenth-century. We see the effects of enclosure and the movement away from the countryside, the spread of literacy, the advent of Chartism and the Reform Bills, and the evolution of a genuine labour movement. Yet even as this verse reflects England's increasing urbanization and industrialization, it also reflects the continuing appeal of the countryside as a site of nostalgia, refuge, piety, social order, and cultural memory. And even as this poetry increasingly engages with broad social issues, it also reflects the continuing importance of poetry itself as a means of self-expression, self-empowerment, introspection, escape and pleasure.
Contents
Volume 1: 1800-1830
Edited by Scott McEathron
Robert Bloomfield, from The Farmer’s Boy (1800); from Rural Tales (1802); from Wild Flowers (1806); from The Banks of Wye (1811); William Holloway, from The Peasant's Fate (1802); from The Chimney-Sweeper's Complaint (1806); from The Country Pastor (1812); Nathaniel Bloomfield, from An Essay on War and Other Poems (1803); Ann Candler, from Poetical Attempts (1803); Joseph Holland, ‘Appendix’ to ‘The Seasons of Spring’ (1806); Charlotte Caroline Richardson (1775-1850), from Poems Written on Different Occasions (1806); from Poems chiefly composed during the pressure of severe illness (1809); from Harvest (1818); from The Soldier's Child (1821); David Service, from The Wild Harp's Murmurs (1811); Mary Bryan, from Sonnets and Metrical Tales (1815); Ebenezer Elliott, from Night (1818); from Love (1823); from Corn Law Rhymes (1834); James Bird (1788-1839), from The White Hats (1819); from Poetical Memoirs (1823); John Clare (1793-1864), from Poems Descriptive of Rural Life and Scenery (1820); from The Village Minstrel (1821); from Shepherd's Calendar (1827); from The Rural Muse (1835); William Smith (fl. 1821-29), from A Collection of Original Poems (1821); from The Haddington Cobler Dissected Alive (1829); James Hogg, from The Poetical Works of James Hogg (1822); Robert Millhouse, from Blossoms (1823); from Song of the Patriot (1826); from Sherwood Forest (1827); John Nicholson, from Airedale in Ancient Times (1825); John Shaw, from Woolton Green (1825); Allen Davenport, from The Muse's Wreath (1827); Index
Volume 2: 1830-1860
Edited by Kaye Kossick
Henry 'Mechanic' Brown, from The Mechanic's Saturday Night (1830); Mary Maria Colling, from Fables and Other Pieces in Verse (1831); Mary Hutton, from Sheffield Manor and Other Poems (1831); John Jones, from Attempts in Verse, by John Jones, an Old Servant: With Some Account of the Writer, Written by Himself (1831); John Wright, from The Retrospect; or, Youthful Scenes. With other Poems and Songs (1833); Charles Crocker, from The Vale of Obscurity (1834); The Poetical Works of Charles Crocker (1860); John Younger, from Thoughts as They Rise (1834); ‘River Angling’ (1840); Thomas Watson, from A Collection of Poems (1835); Thomas Miller, from A Day in the Woods: A Connected Series of Tales and Poems (1836); John Critchley Prince, 'The Death of the Factory Child' (1841); from Hours With the Muses (1841); Robert Nicoll, from The Poems of Robert Nicoll (1842); Robert Story, from Love and Literature: Being the Reminiscences, Literary Opinions and Fugitive Pieces of a Poet in Humble Life (1842); Samuel Bamford, from Homely Rhymes, Poems, and Reminiscences (1843); Thomas Wilson, from The Pitman's Pay and Other Poems (1843); Robert Peddie, from The Dungeon Harp: Being a Number of Poetical Pieces Written During a Cruel Imprisonment of Three Years in the Dungeons of Beverley: Also a Full Proof of the Perjury Perpetrated Against the Author by Some of the Hired Agents of the Authorities (1844); William Thom, from Rhymes and Recollections of a Hand-Loom Weaver (1844); George Richardson, from Patriotism: In Three Cantos, and Other Poems (1844); Thomas Cooper, from The Purgatory of Suicides; A Prison-Rhyme (1845); Gerald Massey, from Voices of Freedom, Lyrics of Love (1850); Poems and Ballads by Gerald Massey, Containing the Ballad of Babe Christabel (1855); Elijah Ridings, from The Village Muse, Containing the Complete Poetical Works of E. Ridings (1854); Ernest Jones, from The Battle Day and Other Poems (1855); selection of Chartist poems published in The Northern Star, together with a range of broadsides, popular verses and songs by concert hall artists and balladeers; Index
Volume 3: 1860-1900
Edited by John Goodridge
Mary Smith (1822-1889), from Poems, By M.S. [Mary Smith, of Carlisle] (1860); Progress, and Other Poems By M.S. (1873); The Autobiography of Mary Smith, Schoolmistress and Nonconformist. A Fragment of a Life. With Letters from Jane Welsh Carlyle and Thomas Carlyle (1892); Miscellaneous Poems (1892); Louisa A. Horsfield, from The Cottage Lyre: Being Miscellaneous Poetry (1862); Ruth Wills, from Lays of Lowly Life (1862); John Leatherland, from Essays and Poems with a brief Autobiographical Memoir (1862); John Askham, from Sonnets on the Months: and other Poems (1863); Janet Hamilton, from Poems And Essays (1863); from Poems of Purpose and Sketches in Prose of Scottish Peasant Life and Character in Auld Langsyne (1865); from Poems And Ballads (1868); Samuel Laycock, from Lancashire Rhymes: or, Homely pictures of the People (1864); Collected Writings (1900); John Macleay Peacock, from Poems and Songs (1864), Hours of Reverie (1867); Poems (1880); Joseph Ramsbottom, from Phases of Distress: Lancashire Rhymes (1864); Ben Brierley, from Home Memories (1866); from Spring Blossoms and Autumn Leaves (1893); from Humorous Rhymes (1894); J.W. Dalby, from Tales, Songs and Sonnets (1866); Ellen Johnston, from her Autobiography, Poems and Songs of Ellen Johnston, The Factory Girl (1867); Edward Capern, from Wayside Warbles (1870); Fanny Forrester, ‘Strangers in the City’, and other poems published in Ben Brierley’s Journal (1870-1880); Joseph Burgess, from A Potential Poet? His Autobiographical Verse (c.1874); Noah Cooke, from Wild Warblings (1876); Edwin Waugh, from Poems and Lancashire Songs (1876); Jessie Russell, from The Blinkin' o' the Fire (1877); Henry Shanks, from The Peasant Poets Of Scotland And Musing Under The Beeches (1881); Robert Maybee, from Sixty-eight Years’ Experience on the Scilly Islands (1884); John Bedford Leno, from The Last Idler, and Other Poems (1889), The Aftermath; with Autobiography of the Author (1892); Joseph Skipsey, from Songs and Lyrics (1892); John Davidson, Fleet Street Eclogues (1893-5); Ballads and Songs (1894); selection of popular and dialect verses and songs by Tommy Armstrong (1848-1920) and others; Index
Reviews
'[an] excellent work, bringing to light a good deal of previously inaccessible material'
– Joe Phelan, The Times Literary Supplement
'Ambitious and wide ranging...this set is a magnificent scholarly achievement.'
– Brian Maidment, Studies in Hogg and his World