Crawford, Thomas, Love, Labour and Liberty: The Eighteenth-Century Scottish Lyric (Cheadle: Carcanet, 1976), nos. 59-60
Douglas, Sir George (ed), Poems of the Scottish Minor Poets, from the age of Ramsay to David Gray (London and New York: Walter Scott, [1891]), Canterbury Poets series, 57-8, 290-1
Radcliffe, David Hill (ed.), Spenser and the Tradition: English Poetry, 1759-1830
Goosegrave Penny Readings (c. 1865)
Spring Blossoms and autumn leaves (Manchester, 1893)
Harland, John, Ballads and Songs of Lancashire (Part 2, Modern), corrected, revised and enlarged by T.T. Wilkinson (East Ardsley, Wakefield: EP Publishing limited, 1976), facsimile edition based on the third edition of 1882, 447-8, 552-4
Hollingworth, Brian (ed), Songs of the People: Lancashire Dialect Poetry of the Industrial Revolution (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1977), 152
Ashton, Owen and Roberts, Stephen, The Victorian Working Class Writer (London and New York: Mansell, 1999), ch. 8, 97-121
Maidment, Brian (ed), The Poorhouse Fugitives: Self-Taught Poets and Poetry in Victorian Britain (Manchester: Carcanet, 1987), 360-2, 364-6
National Register of Archives (Manchester)
Reilly, Catherine W., Late Victorian poetry, 1880-1899: an annotated biobibliography (London and New York: Mansell, 1994), 64
Vicinus, Martha, ‘The Study of 19th-Century British Working-Class Poetry’, in The Politics of Literature: Dissenting Essays on the Teaching of English, ed. by Louis Kampf and Paul Lauter (New York: Random House, 1970), 322-53, 349n5
Vicinus, Martha, ‘Literary Voices of an Industrial Town: Manchester, 1810-70’, in The Victorian City: Images and Realities, ed. by H.J. Dyos and Michael Wolff (London and Boston: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1973), 739-61, 753-6
Vincent, David, Bread, Knowledge and Freedom: A Study of Nineteenth-Century Working Class Autobiography (London and New York: Methuen, 1981), 111-13, 182
Zlotnick, Susan, Woman, Writing and the Industrial Revolution (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1998), 195-7
Known as "The Irish Chatterton," Thomas Dermody was the son of an Ennis schoolmaster. Jason Edwards observes that Dermody showed "a precocious talent for drinking, poetry, and scholarship" (ODNB), and alcoholism would ail him until his death in near vagrancy in London in 1802. His poetry, often reprinted and anthologized, has been noted for its wit and allusiveness.
Dermody was a child prodigy, learning Greek and Latin at the age of four and serving as his father's classical assistant from age nine. He ran away to Dublin at age fifteen and won the patronage of several high-profile dignitaries and aristocrats, who (in the space of one year) helped him publish three volumes of poetry, a few critical essays, and a pamphlet on the war in France. Dermody, however, resisted his patrons, boldly declaring in his poetry, "I am vicious because I like it" (ODNB). Having put up with his alcoholism and distemper, his patrons finally abandoned him when he refused a scholarship to Trinity College, Dublin.
Dermody joined the army (the 108th regiment, as a private) and served with such distinction in France that he won a commission. However, returning to London, Dermody quickly fell back into his drinking habits and died in poverty in a hovel in Kent on his half-birthday, 15 July, 1802.
R. Welch, ed., The Oxford companion to Irish literature (1996), 142
S. Deane, A. Carpenter, and J. Williams, eds., The Field Day anthology of Irish Writing, 1 (1991), 399, 401–3, 418, 492, 495
Basker, James G. (ed), Amazing Grace: An Anthology of Poems about Slavery 1660-1810 (New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 2002), 406-7
Goodridge, John, ‘Rowley’s Ghost: a Checklist of Creative Works Inspired by Thomas Chatterton’s Life and Writings’, in Thomas Chatterton and Romantic Culture, ed. by Nick Groom (London: Macmillan, 1999), 262-92, item 32;
Jackson, J.R. de R., Annals of English Verse 1770-1835. A preliminary survey of the volumes published (New York & London: Garland Publishing, 1985)
Johnson, C.R., Provincial Poetry 1789-1839: British Verse Printed in the Provinces: The Romantic Background (London: Jed Press, 1992), item 326
Richardson, Alan, Literature, Education, and Romanticism: Reading as Social Practice, 1780-1832 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1994), 249
Sutton, David C. (ed), Location Register of English Literary Manuscripts and Letters: Eighteenth and Nineteenth Centuries (London: The British Library, 1995), 73
The Weaver Boy; or Miscellaneous Poetry (Manchester 1819)
Hours in the Bowers. Poems (Manchester, 1834)
Homely rhymes, poems and reminiscences (1843, rev. and enlarged edn London and Manchester, 1864)
Harland, John, Ballads and Songs of Lancashire (Part 2, Modern), corrected, revised and enlarged by T.T. Wilkinson (East Ardsley, Wakefield: EP Publishing limited, 1976), facsimile edition based on the third edition of 1882, 220-8, 289-91, 353-5, 411-13, 479-80, 485-8
Hollingworth, Brian (ed), Songs of the People: Lancashire Dialect Poetry of the Industrial Revolution (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1977), 151
Passages in the Life of a Radical (1860), two vols
Account of the Arrest and Imprisonment of Samuel Bamford (1817)
Walks in South Lancashire (1844)
Tawk o'seawth Lankeshur (1850)
Johnson, C.R., Provincial Poetry 1789-1839: British Verse Printed in the Provinces: The Romantic Background (London: Jed Press, 1992), item 46
Maidment, Brian (ed), The Poorhouse Fugitives: Self-Taught Poets and Poetry in Victorian Britain (Manchester: Carcanet, 1987), 232-42
Nineteenth-Century Short-title Catalogue (NCSTC)
Reilly, Catherine W., Mid-Victorian poetry, 1860-1879: an annotated biobibliography (London: Mansell, 2000), 27
Sutton, David C. (ed), Location Register of English Literary Manuscripts and Letters: Eighteenth and Nineteenth Centuries (London: The British Library, 1995), 36
Vicinus, Martha, "Literary Voices of an Industrial Town: Manchester, 1810-70," in The Victorian City: Images and Realities, ed. by H.J. Dyos and Michael Wolff (London and Boston: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1973), 739-61, 741
Vicinus, Martha, The Industrial Muse: Nineteenth-Century British Working-Class Literature (Croom Helm, 1974), 149
Zlotnick, Susan, Woman, Writing and the Industrial Revolution (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1998), 179-80
Anderson received some education at the Quaker school of Carlisle – surely helping to instill in him a veneration of equality – but had to turn to hard labor at the age of ten to assist his "poor father." He was apprenticed as a calico printer – using any spare money to obtain copies of Addison, Pope, Fielding and Smollet – and later as a pattern drawer. During the five years he spent in London, he was exploited terribly, and was "confined to a wretched garret" for several months until a sister came to his aid. The mock pastoral Scottish-style songs Anderson heard on visiting Vauxhall Gardens simultaneously disgusted him and roused his poetic sensibilities.
Anderson’s earliest poem, Lucy Gray of Allendale, was inspired by a tale he heard from a Northumbrian rustic, about a village beauty – "fairer than any flow’r that blows" – who died at seventeen, and was thereafter followed by her lover. He was granted free admission to the gardens after the song was performed to "great applause." The story also seemingly informed Wordsworth’s own "Lucy Gray." Anderson published his first collection, Poems on various Subjects, in 1798, which included "The Slave," conveying his indignation at the slave trade:
Torn from every dear connection,
Forc'd across the yielding wave,
The Negro, stung by keen reflection,
May exclaim, Man's but a slave!
It was not until 1805 that Anderson published his best-known work, Ballads in the Cumberland Dialect, a selection taken from verse and prose featured in a local newspaper, delineating the manners and customs of his native land. Caine (2004) writes: "since he drew his materials from real life, Anderson was much feared for his personal attacks; he had a keen eye for the ludicrous, and pictured with fidelity the ale-drinking, guzzling, and cock-fighting side of the character of the Cumbrian farm labourer."
Following the death of his father in 1807, Anderson went to work in Belfast via a pilgrimage to the grave of Robert Burns, which affected him greatly, as did the "distressing scenes" of poverty in the countryside outside Belfast. In his memoir, he wrote, "it is much to be lamented that no provision whatever is held out by the British government to the poor of Ireland." The two-volume edition of Anderson’s Poetical Works appeared in 1820, at a time when his local reputation drew subscriptions from Wordsworth and Southey.
In his twilight years Anderson’s life became marred by bouts of intemperance and acute poverty, and he was haunted by the prospect of ending his life in St Mary’s workhouse. He died in Carlisle on 26 September 1833.
Poems on Various Subjects. London: J. Mitchell, 1798
Ballads in the Cumbrian dialect. Carlisle, 1805, London, 1881
Poetical Works of Robert Anderson: to which is prefixed the life of the author, written by himself, 2 vols. Carlisle, 1820
Anderson’s Cumberland Ballads and Songs. A Centenary Edition, ed. Revd T. Ellwood. Ulverston: W. Holmes, 1904
Selections from the Cumberland Ballads of Robert Anderson, ed. George Crowther. Ulverston: W. Holmes, 1907
Ashraf, Mary (ed), Political Verse and Song from Britain and Ireland (East Berlin: Seven Seas Publishers, 1975), 117-18
Basker, James G. (ed), Amazing Grace: An Anthology of Poems about Slavery 1660-1810 (New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 2002), 528-9
Anonymous. Robert Anderson, the Cumberland Bard. A Centenary Celebration Souvenir. Carlisle: 1933
Burke, Tim, "Robert Anderson (1770-1833)," Eighteenth-Century English Labouring-Class Poets, 1700-1800. 3 vols. London: Pickering & Chatto, 2003. Vol. III, 305-328
Cafarelli, Annette Wheeler, "The Romantic 'Peasant' Poets and their Patrons," The Wordsworth Circle, 26 (1995), 77-87, 83-4
Gregson, K, "The Cumberland Bard: Anniversary Reflections," Folk Music Journal 4 (1983), 333-66
Johnson, C.R., Provincial Poetry 1789-1839: British Verse Printed in the Provinces: The Romantic Background (London: Jed Press, 1992), items 17-22, 64, 573, 743, 795
Sutton, David C. (ed), Location Register of English Literary Manuscripts and Letters: Eighteenth and Nineteenth Centuries (London: The British Library, 1995), 14