Stephen Duck

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Stephen Duck (1705? - 1756) was an English poet whose career reflected both the Augustan era's interest in "naturals" (natural geniuses) and its resistance to classlessness. Duck was born in Wiltshire, England, but almost nothing is known, either through Duck's comments or contemporary records, about his family, except that they were laborers and very poor. Duck attended a charity school and left at the age of thirteen to begin working in the fields.

Around 1724, he married Ann (died in 1730) and began to attempt to better himself and escape the toil and poverty of agricultural work. He read Milton, Dryden, Prior, and The Spectator, as well as the Holy Bible, according to Joseph Spence. He was "discovered" by Alured Clarke of Winchester Cathedral, and Clarke introduced him to high society. Clarke and Spence (the Professor of Poetry at Oxford University and friend of Alexander Pope) promoted Duck as a sincerely pious man of sober wit. Clarke and Spence saw poetry that Duck was writing, but none of this verse was published. Between 1724 and 1730, he and Ann had three children.

In 1730, Duck combined some of the poetic pieces he had been writing and wrote The Thresher's Labour, a poem that described the difficulty of field work. The poem was celebrated throughout London society, and he soon wrote The Shunammite, which reflected Duck's piety and religious imagination. The poet was taken to meet Queen Caroline, and, while he was there, word came of the death of his wife, but Clarke kept the news from Duck until after the interview with the Queen. For her part, she was pleased and gave Duck an annuity and a small house.

Duck continued to write and to be seen as both a paradigm of self-improvement and the natural poet. In 1733, Duck was made a Yeoman of the Guard by the queen, and that year he met and married Sarah Big, Caroline's housekeeper at Kew. In 1735, Caroline made him keeper of the Queen's library at Merlin's Cave in Richmond. During this period, Duck wrote many poems, with increasing polish and urbanity. His Poems in 1736 had both Pope and Jonathan Swift as subscribers.

Swift and Pope both made disparaging remarks or outright satires on Duck. In 1731 to 1733, Swift satirized the poverty of Duck's rhymes several places. However, both men seemed to like Stephen Duck as a person, and both were impressed by his religious sincerity. When Duck was rumored to be a candidate for the Laureate, this distinction between the private man and the quality of the verse made him a worthy target.

When Queen Caroline died in 1737, Duck was left without a patron and without direct inspiration. He wrote eight very long poems after her death. In 1744, Sarah Big Duck died, and Stephen married again, although this wife's name is unknown. Duck was ordained in 1746 and became chaplain to Henry Cornwall and then to Ligonier's forces in 1750 before becoming the chaplain of Kew. He went on to serve as the pastor of Byfleet, Surrey, where he was well liked by his congregation.

The exact date of Duck's death is unknown, as he committed suicide by drowning between March 30th and April 2nd in 1756.

Since the 1990's, Duck has seen renewed interest among New Historicist and Marxist literary critics. Duck's case featured in the The New Eighteenth Century (Landry), and this inspired further critical work. The Donna Landry and William Christmas edited issue of Criticism featured two articles on Duck in 2005.

[edit] References

• Stephen, Leslie, revised by William R. Jones. "Stephen Duck" in Matthew, H.C.G. and Brian Harrison, eds. The Oxford Dictionary of National Biography. vol. 17, 33-34. London: OUP, 2004.
• Robert DeMaria's headnote and text of The Thresher's Labour via Google Books
• Landry, Donna. "The Resignation of Mary Collier" in The New Eighteenth Century. Nussbaum, F. and L. Brown, eds. New York: Routledge, 1987. p. 99 - 120.
• Van Hagen, S. "Literary Technique, the Aestheticization of Laboring Experience, and Generic Experimentation in Stephen Duck's The Thresher's Labour". Criticism, Landry, D. and W. Christmas, eds. (47):4, 421-50.
• Batt, Jennifer. "From the Field to the Coffeehouse: Changing Representations of Stephen Duck." Criticism, Landry, D. and W. Christmas, eds. (47):4, 451-70.