Robert Anderson (poet)
Robert Anderson (1770–1833), was an English Cumbrian poet.
Life
Anderson was born in Carlisle, 1 February 1770. He was at first sent to a charity school supported by the dean and chapter of his native city, and afterwards he attended the Quaker School of Carlisle, taught by Isaac Ritson. This was the sum of his educational advantages. At ten years of age he began to earn his living as an assistant to a calico printer, and somewhat later he was bound apprentice to a pattern drawer in Carlisle. He spent five years in London, and hearing songs sung at Vauxhall seems to have fired his ambition as a poet.[1]
Late in life Anderson started to drink, and eventually fell into extreme poverty, haunted by fear of ending his days in St. Mary's workhouse. He died in Carlisle 26 September 1833.[1]
Verse
Anderson's earliest effort was entitled Lucy Gray, a poetic rendering of a story he had heard from a Northumbrian rustic. Lucy had been the village beauty, who died in her seventeenth year, and was soon followed by her lover. The story probably suggested to William Wordsworth the lines (written in 1799 and published first in 1800) beginning: "She dwelt among the untrodden ways"; the name and metre of Wordsworth's Lucy Gray seem also to have been taken from a poem of Anderson's. In 1798 Anderson published this poem in his first volume, but it was not until seven years later that he issued the ballads in the Cumbrian dialect by which his name is known, though he wrote and published his popular ballad, "Betty Brown," in 1801. Anderson was not the first to write verse in the dialect of his district. Thomas Sanderson gives the name of Josiah Relph, of Sebergham, as that of the first Cumbrian poet who wrote in the dialect, and Sir F. Madden mentions a Rev. Robert Nelson, of Great Salkeld, as contemporary with Relph. Certainly Susanna Blamire, Ewan Clarke, and Mark Lonsdale, as well as Josiah Relph, preceded Anderson.[1]
Anderson drew his materials from real life, was much feared for his personal attacks, had a keen eye for the ludicrous, and pictured the ale-drinking, guzzling, and cock-fighting side of the Cumbrian farm labourer. Among his dialect poems were "The Impatient Lass," "King Roger," "Will and Kate," "The Bashfu' Wooer," "Lae Stephen," "The Lass abuin Thirty," and "Jenny's Complaint."[1]
The portrait prefixed to one of the volumes of Sidney Gilpin's anthologies of Cumbrian songs shows a face of the cast of that of Wordsworth. In 1805 the "Cumbrian Ballads" were published in Wigton, and an edition (2 vols.) was published in Carlisle in 1820.[1]
References
- ↑ 1.0 1.1 1.2 1.3 1.4
"Anderson, Robert (1770-1833)". Dictionary of National Biography. London: Smith, Elder & Co. 1885–1900.
External links
- Attribution
- This article incorporates text from a publication now in the public domain: "Anderson, Robert (1770-1833)". Dictionary of National Biography. London: Smith, Elder & Co. 1885–1900.
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