Alexander Bald

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Alexander Bald, (1783–1859), poet.

Bald was a poet and frequent contributor to The Scots Magazine. As the ‘father’ of the ‘Shakespeare Club of Alloa’, he became a friend and correspondent with the poets James Hogg (the club’s ‘laureate’, who wrote Ode to the Genius of Shakespeare for the club) and John Grieve[1]. Bald features in Hogg's story Some Passages in the Life of Colonel Cloud that featured in Blackwood's Magazine in 1825[2]. In the story, Colonel Cloud travels with the narrator to the annual Shakespeare Festival at Alloa, there they meet ‘Mr Alexander Bald’[3].

Bald worked as a timber and brick merchant. His two best known poems feature in The Modern Scottish Minstrel, Volume V. by Charles Rogers (1857) and three others are found in The Poets of Clackmannanshire by James Beveridge (1885). Alexander Bald was the brother of Robert Bald, the engineer.

[edit] Bibliography

  • The Modern Scottish Minstrel, by Charles Rogers, LL.D. F.S.A. Scot.
  • The Clackmannanshire Poets, by James Beveridge.

[edit] References

  1. ^ The Collected Letters of James Hogg, p.443, 2004, Edinburgh University Press ISBN 0748616713
  2. ^ ‘Some Passages in the Life of Colonel Cloud' Blackwoods Edinburgh Magazine, Vol. XVIII, July - December 1825
  3. ^ 'The Genesis of ‘Gil-Martin’: James Hogg, ‘Colonel Cloud’, and ‘The Madman in the Mercury’' - David Groves, Notes and Queries, Volume 52, Number 4, December 2005, OUP

[edit] External links