Ebenezer Elliott was born on 17 March 1781 at Masbrough, near Rotherham, in the West Riding of Yorkshire, and died on 1 December 1849 at Great Houghton, near Barnsley. He became known in his own lifetime as the “Corn Law Rhymer,” a title at once admiring, limiting, and revealing. It identified him with the campaign against the laws that kept imported grain expensive and bread beyond the reach of many poor families, b…
“I claim to be a pioneer of the greatest, the most beneficial, the only crimeless Revolution, which man has yet seen. I also claim to be the poet of that Revolution—the Bard of Free-trade.”
Neighbourhood:
Nature Poets, Political Poets, Social Justice Poets, Victorian Poets
Emotional landscape: Anger, Sorrow, Fear
On a steamy July day in 1864, a man stumbled and fell in his dingy room at the North American Hotel on the Bowery in New York City. When help finally arrived, Stephen Collins Foster lay bleeding, having struck his head on a washbasin. In his pockets, rescuers found a purse containing thirty-eight cents and a scrap of paper bearing the words "dear friends and gentle hearts." Three days later, on January 13, 1864, Fost…
“I have done a great deal to build up a taste for the Ethiopian songs among refined people by making the words suitable to their taste, instead of the trashy and really offensive words which belong to some songs of that order.”
Neighbourhood:
American Poets, Folk & Ballad Poets, Hymn Writers, Poet-Musicians
Emotional landscape: Tenderness, Longing, Wonder
