The bards of Blackburn and the centrality of local newspapers to Victorian poetry
Paper given at North West Long Nineteenth Century Seminar, Manchester Metropolitan University, 6 November 2013
Most Victorian poetry was probably published and read in local newspapers, the most popular type of Victorian newspaper. In the region of four or five million poems were published in this way during the nineteenth century. This means that Victorian poetry, in terms of writing it and reading it, is overwhelmingly about magazines and newspapers, particularly local papers – rather than books.
In this talk I will explain how we calculated the huge amount of local newspaper poetry, and then home in on the circumstances in which local poetry was produced, in the Lancashire textile town of Blackburn. I hope to demonstrate that poetry was not an elite activity millions of people indulged in what Laporte calls ‘Victorian poetic behaviour’. As a writer in Blackwood’s noted in 1859, ‘an immense number of people, with little practice and no skill, are trying to compose, are ambitious to appear in print, are pluming their feathers for a flight. The people, in fact, are writing for themselves.’ I will also argue for the importance of the local press in stimulating this huge amount of poetic production, part of its wider cultural role.
The scale of poetry publishing in the local press
Provincial papers typically published one poem per issue at mid-century, rising to two per issue from 1860 onwards (Fig 1).
There were thousands of local papers published during the nineteenth century, some daily, some bi- or tri-weekly, some weekly, with many more provincial titles than London titles (Fig. 2).
Clare Januszewski and I looked at the 51 provincial titles in the 19th Century British Library Newspapers digal collection, and found that only two of the 51 newspapers did not have a regular poetry column at one time or another. We then counted how many poems were published in a sample of five papers from around England, the Blackburn Standard, Manchester Times, Bristol Mercury, Hampshire Telegraph (published in Portsmouth) and the North-Eastern Daily Gazette (published in Middlesbrough). We searched systematically every 20 years from 1800 to 1900. In each sample year, every issue of the weekly papers was examined; every other issue of the bi-weekly, alternating editions each week, and once per week in dailies (a different day each week – Monday in week 1, Tuesday in week 2 and so on).
To gain a sense of poetry publishing nationally, I extrapolated from the five sample papers to all papers published in the same sample years, using conservative figures at every step. I multiplied the average number of poems published per issue in that year, by the number of local papers published, by the number of issues per year for weeklies, bi-weeklies and dailies, to produce approximate figures for each year. So, for example, 0.7 poems were published per issue in 1800, when there were 100 newspapers published, all of them weekly, producing a total of 52 issues per year per title. This gave a total number of poems published nationally of 3,640. Adding the years together gives a conservative total of 5,549,000.
The amount of poetry published in provincial newspapers increased almost every year of the century (Fig. 3), simply because more newspaper titles were published. This finding challenges the narrative of decline in poetry publishing based on poetry issued in book form.
We gathered bibliographical details of more than 1800 poems from the sample papers in the sample years, available here.
We analysed these poems in terms of topics, how much was reprinted, how much original, the proportion of anonymous or pseudonymous poetry (for all five papers, 40% of poems had an author, 45% were anonymous and 15% pseudonymous) and the gender of poets where known (see Figs 4 and 5 for Blackburn).
Fig 4. All poems in 1900 were written by the same author, Henry Yates (‘Tansy Tuft’). Female-authored poems in 1840 included nine by Felicia Hemans and two by Caroline Norton.
The most significant function of the local newspaper for Victorian poetry was its ability to deliver verse about local places, people and events, by local poets, to a local audience. Poems on local topics put humble localities on the same map as Mount Parnassus, home of the muses. We found that between a third and a half of poetry published in the local press was local, rather than reprinted from magazines, other newspapers or books. These included many poems of place, such as ‘The Lads of Ribblesdale’ by Thomas Chippendale (excerpted below):
How oft I've heard of Tiber's stream where Rome's fair city stands,
And oft I've heard of the glorious Rhine, away in foreign lands;
While Beranger and Lamartine can many a 'soul inspire
With songs of vine-clad mountains on the banks of Rhone and Loire.
For years proud London's mighty arms have hugged old Father Thames,
And Shakespeare left sweet Avon's banks wreathed with eternal gems;
While Falconer praised Killarney's Falls, Sam Lover and Tom Moore
Immortalised the many streams that grace old Erin's shore.
Some climb the hills and castles in the pleasant vale of Wye,
And by the Tweed some think of wars oft fought in days gone by;
While other hearts with rapture throb to nature's purest tune
Sung by the Prince of Scottish Bards along the banks of Doon.
Still Craven lads, lift up your heads, there's yet another stream
You've played beside in infancy and seen in midnight dream;
Where gallant men from Cæsar's land deserted beauteous Rome,
And on the Ribble's fertile banks were proud to make a home.
Local poetry could also be used to add emotional power to wider topics, as in ‘The Voice of Want’, about the Lancashire cotton famine, by David Little or ‘Eh! This War!’ by ‘Tansy Tuft’ (Henry Yates), about the Boer War. Local personalities were celebrated or condemned, as in this rhyme about a miserly grocer, ‘The Steam Engine Coffee Grinder’ by Joseph Hodgson:
THE STEAM-ENGINE COFFEE GRINDER.
He grinds his coffee now with steam,
To shew the world how he can scheme,
And how he buys with ready cash,
Because his credit's gone to smash.
His shop is painted neat and new,
With angels, flying, painted blue,
With golden trumps and golden wings,
And all such bright and pretty things.
Instead of cherubs, to compound
He should have devils wheeling round,
To shew his black, deceitful heart,
And how he failed and paid a part.
This local poetry raises many questions, including the identity of the pseudonymous and anonymous writers, and in particular why so much poetry was written by local poets, and published by local papers. Some answers can be found in the newspapers themselves, but to understand the identities and circumstances of many unknown poets, we need to use other evidence, including biographies and autobiographies, useful introductory material in volumes of poetry, more general local histories, and archival sources such as poets’ scrapbooks. In the case of Blackburn, these sources enable us to create a case study of the local literary and poetic culture that fed into the newspaper poetry of the town. Blackburn’s unusually vibrant working-class poetic culture meant that the town ‘produced more weavers of calico and of verse than any other town in the United Kingdom’, according to John Walker, Blackburn poet and journalist.
Blackburn is a cotton town created by the Industrial Revolution, 200 miles north of London and 30 miles north of Manchester. Its literary and poetic culture were part of a broader local self-improvement network, including a Mechanics’ Institute, discussion classes, informal schools and debating societies. Local papers reported on these activities and encouraged them. For most of the nineteenth century there was at least one, usually two, rival newspapers published in the town.
Leading figures in Blackburn’s poetry culture
One of the most influential figures was not actually a poet (apart from some juvenile verse). William Abram (1835-94) was a Lancashire printer who had worked in London and had had a youthful penchant for verse before taking charge of Blackburn’s newly opened free library in 1860, and then becoming editor of the Blackburn Times in 1867. Abram was a keen promoter of local literary talent; 'he loved Literature and taught others to love it'. He liked to read aloud the poetry of Tennyson, Wordsworth, Byron and Swinburne (but never Browning aloud), and the Elizabethan and Cavalier poets, he co-edited the complete works of the Cavalier poet Robert Herrick (1591-1674), was a founder of the Blackburn Literary Club and ‘donned wig and gown, in 1861, as Counsel in the famous (mock) trial, "Bardell versus Pickwick"’.
One of the earliest Blackburn poets was handloom weaver Joseph Hodgson (d. 1856), whose verse was published in the Blackburn Mail and the Blackburn Standard. His obituary notes that he left a library of 800 volumes.
Richard Dugdale (1790-1875), soldier, engraver and self-proclaimed ‘Bard of Ribblesdale’ ( many Blackburn poets took or were given these honorifics); he claimed to have met a relative of Burns, of whom he was a great admirer. Burns’s class, his rootedness and his proud use of his own language, gave legitimacy to writers of working-class dialect poetry in Lancashire and across Britain.
John Critchley Prince (1808-66) from Wigan, a member of the Manchester Sun Inn group of writers, lived in Blackburn for some years, and associated with the town’s poets, who venerated him greatly.
John Baron (1823-80), another cotton operative, was known as the ‘Grimshaw Park Poet’; weaver Henry Yates (b. 1841), named the ‘Bard of Islington’ by his neighbours in that district of the town, was a prolific writer of prose and verse for Blackburn and Preston papers and for Ben Brierley's Journal, Cassell's Saturday Journal and others. Some of his lyrics set to music by a local organist and composer.
Foundry worker John T Baron (1856-1921, no relation), had many poems published in the local Dick Snowdrop’s Comic Journal and went on to write some 1,800 dialect poems for the Blackburn Times under his dialect nom de plume, Jack o’Ann’s.
But the most popular Blackburn poet was mill worker William Billington (1825-84), whose verse appeared in the Blackburn Standard, Blackburn Times and other local papers. He was depicted as 'William Bentley' in William Westall's novel Red Ryvington and published two volumes, at his own expense, with Abram offering editorial help for the first.
William Billington (1825-84), ‘Bard of Blackburn’
Most of these writers were proficient in both standard English and Lancashire dialect. There were many more – George Hull’s anthology, The Poets and Poetry of Blackburn (1903) includes more than 50.
Blackburn’s poets had their regular haunts. There was the Black Horse on Northgate, 'the rendezvous of lawyers, auctioneers, agents, reporters, local poets, and literatteurs', run by Will Durham, known as ‘the Blackburn chronologist’. Journalist and poet William Whittaker recalled a visit with another reporter in the 1850s or 1860s, where they found John Boothman of the Blackburn Weekly Times and 'on the other side sat the burly bard of Ribblesdale, Dugdale, and two other poets -- Billington and Baron, and snoring in the chimney corner sat John C Prince ...'
Billington himself became a pub landlord across the same street, at the Nag’s Head, although 'the descent from Parnassus to the beer-cellar ... from Helicon to Dutton's brewery ...' seemed wrong to some of his friends. Abram describes one night when about 20 members of the Literary Club went for a drink at Billington’s pub. ‘Among the party were poets, chief of them the host himself; excellent elocutionists, singers, journalists, and literary critics… Recitation, criticism, song, discussion, comical story, and bandied “chaff,” succeeded each other’ until a passing policeman reported them all for drinking after hours; the chief constable quietly let the matter drop.
Billington named his next place, a beerhouse in Bradshaw Street, ‘Poet’s Corner’, and from 1875 until his death in 1885 it was an important centre of working-class literary and educational activity, with Sunday evening debates (‘Wordsworth v. Byron’, for example), lectures and poetry readings.
These meeting places were overwhelmingly male – in Manchester, Isabella Varley had to hide behind a curtain at the Sun Inn to hear one of her own poems being read. For such women, the local press was essential in bringing together writers and readers who could not easily meet in person.
Like any community, Blackburn’s poetic community was not always harmonious. There were disputes in pubs, in the street, and in print, often conducted in rhyme. In 1887, for example, Abram moved from editing the Liberal Blackburn Times to editing a new Conservative paper, the Blackburn Express, because he no longer agreed with Gladstone’s politics. This caused outrage among Liberals, poets included, leading to a notorious poetic hoax. A poem was submitted, allegedly from a teenage girl, Mary Richardson, to Abram, praising his new paper. However, it was a hoax, containing an acrostic insult, spelled out in the first letter of each line:
Poetic behaviour and bardic communities
There are two useful ideas in understanding Blackburn’s poetic culture: Brian Maidment’s concept of the bardic community, and Charles LaPorte’s concept of ‘poetic behaviour’. Maidment argues that working-class espousal of the Romantic idea of the bard encouraged the idea that ‘all individuals possessed the sensibility, if not the skill or linguistic resources, to be poets.' Some of the poetry published – and unpublished -- in the local press suggests that many people believed lack of skill was no barrier, that everyone had the right to express themselves in verse, to indulge in what Laporte calls ‘poetic behaviour’. According to Maidment, these local groups of working-class poets functioned as ‘bardic communities’, with the self-educated poet seen as a ‘slightly more articulate neighbour’. Romantic poets, especially Wordsworth and Shelley, had raised the status of the bardic identity -- associated with 'unlettered' poetry, 'spontaneous talent' -- making it very attractive to provincial self-educated writers who were excluded geographically and culturally from the centres of literary power.
In my view, Robert Burns was particularly important – because of his class, use of non-Standard English language, and his ordinary, everyday subject matter.
Maidment identifies four characteristics of bardic groups, based on a study of Manchester’s mid-century poetic culture, all of which were also present in Blackburn:
1. dedicatory poems to fellow poets,
3. the linking of poetry with local pride,
4. use of an expanding range of places and publications for performance and publication, especially local newspapers and periodicals.
Dedicatory poems to fellow poets
A huge amount of poems were dedicated to local writers, for example when John Baron’s former teacher Charles Tiplady was 60 and Baron 50, ‘an exchange of reminiscences in verse took place between the teacher and scholar’, with poems such as Tiplady’s ‘Answer to John Baron’s Retrospective Stanzas’. The 1882 William Billington poem, ‘Where Are The Blackburn Poets Gone?’ names 26 local poets:
I met an acquaintance a day or two since,
A friend of the reedmaker poet, JOHN PRINCE,
A man whose acquaintance with men and with books
Hath seldom been rivalled, 'twas Mr. CHARLES ROOKS,
The "Junius of Blackburn" named, once on a time,
A master of prose and a critic of rhyme;
Whilst a tear and a tribute were paid to old John,
He asked,—Where the poets of Blackburn had gone?
My answer was ready, if time for a walk
Were at his disposal, the toil by the talk
Would be doubly repaid; he endorsed the remark,
Took my arm, and we sauntered along through the Park.
This scene was once rural and rugged enough,
A quaint rustic valley called Pemberton Clough,
Where "Ribblesdale's" gooseberry garden once shone,
But alas! both the "bard" and the garden are gone.
The time had been short but the changes were vast,
Our thoughts and our sympathies turned to the past,
And, with fond recollection, flew back to those days
When we loitered up Longshaw, or strolled through Damheys
With a posse of poets, though local in name,
Whose merit might match some of national fame—
Some are dead, some have fled, some have ceased to sing on,
But the most of the poets of Blackburn are gone!
Since HODGSON, and BARON, and DUGDALE are dead;
Since CHADBURN, and WALKDEN, and DALY are fled;
Since CLEMESHA, BRADLEY, and STEWART, and HUGHES
Have vanished; since SALISBURY deserted the muse;
Since ABRAM, and WALKER, and RAWCLIFFE, and YATES
Seem to rest on their laurels, defying the fates,
There's JARDINE, there's WHITAKER, WALSH, LITTLE JOHN—
Why, why are these silent, and where have those gone?
I replied, being queried, which did I like best,
The singing of GRAHAM, the silence of WEST,
The language of LITTLETON, least understood,
Or CHIP'S single song, and his "goose"?—which was good,
Don't hide in a napkin your talent, like WEST,
Nor scruple to sing, lest you should not sing best:
The steps to the heavens that glitter up yon,
Each rests on one lower, and all upon one.
He meets retribution, and merits it quite,
Who under a bushel obscureth his light;
The God-given talent should not be confined
To a circle of friends, when 'twas meant for mankind;
Go, lay out your money, in trade or in trust;
Machines when left idle will ruin and rust;
Or reckon all reasons, the pro and the con,
For singing we've many, for silence we've none.
The spink and the sparrow will twitter in spring,
The swift or the swallow in summer will sing;
The thickets with music in May will abound,
But the lark and the linnet sing all the year round.
Then why should the bards of my own humble sphere,
The gifted and good, whom I'm proud to revere,
Relinquish the lyre, while the least worthy one,
In sadness of heart singeth—"Where are they gone?"
We've climbed up the mountains and sailed on the sea;
On beauty we've banqueted, bounding and free,
Britannia's green valleys we've traversed by times,
Making many-voic'd echo give answer in rhymes;
And we read the sweet poets of many a land,
Ere Death and old Time had divided our band;
But soon the last scene will be closing upon
One more, to be gathered to where they are gone!
In fine, may the bards of this smoky old town
By their confluent gleams add a glow to its crown,
"Like stars in one sky let them mingle their blaze
Of light, nor be jealous of each other's rays";
Like flowers in one garden put forth their bright bloom,
Nor envy the fairest its tints or perfume;
The pipes of an organ all vary in tone,
Their sound must be several, their music is one.
In Blackburn there was only one group anthology, –George Hull’s Poets And Poetry Of Blackburn (1903), featuring more than 50 writers, but published after the town’s peak of poetic production. Significantly, most of the featured poems were originally published in the local press.
Linking of poetry with local pride
This is seen in the introduction to Hull’s anthology, which presents Blackburn’s poets as a major part of the town’s history, and poetry as Blackburn’s pre-eminent art-form. It is also seen in the response from both public and other poets to the death of Billington, Blackburn’s best loved poet. There was a public appeal for funds towards a memorial for the poet; contributors included Blackburn Literary Club (£7, 3s), many local litterateurs, publishers of the two Blackburn weeklies (10/6 each) and the Dog and Otter Arms Friendly Discussion Club (8/1), among many others. The money paid for an ornate gravestone and a portrait which hung in the hall of the Free Library. One of Billington’s obituaries captured the sense of literary magic and prestige that poetry could impart to ordinary places:
he had felt the fresh breeze of Parnassus, the Muses had anointed his eyes until the grimy streets of Blackburn, the moorlands that hedge us in, and the people that move to and fro among our thoroughfares and mills became the themes of rhapsody and verse.
Growth of opportunities for performance and publication
This was related to public and official recognition of the bardic role. For example, in the 1850s ‘the Scotchmen of Blackburn gave a banquet to the "Bards of Blackburn”’; George Barton, a Blackburn Standard employee and choirmaster at St James’s church, set local poets’ work to music, including poems by Billington and John Baron. And John T Baron was given time off work from Livesey’s Greenbank Foundry to write his weekly verse for the Blackburn Times when he became well known as a poet. Perhaps his employer saw this as a civic duty, like time off for jury service.
There were other public duties expected of poets, who became local laureates, marking civic occasions, anniversaries and other special occasions. Below is a hymn sung by thousands of Sunday School children to mark the laying of the foundation-stone of Blackburn Infirmary on May 24th, 1858. It was composed by John Critchley Prince at the request of the committee of the ceremony:
Lord, on this bright, auspicious day,
We raise our glad and grateful lay;
And trust that Thy approving eye
Will watch us from the glorious sky.
For thou hast made men's hearts to feel,
And warmed them with a worthy zeal,
To soften sickness and distress;
To cheer, to succour, and to bless.
When the Blackburn Times reached its fiftieth anniversary in 1905, George Hull composed a poem to celebrate the occasion:
Hail to thy fiftieth birthday, Blackburn Times,
Thus friends at home, thus friends in far-off climes
Salute thee,—champion true, in time of need,
Of men oppressed, whate'er their class or creed.
Since Ernest King first toiled with voice and pen,
Thou ne'er hast lacked thy force of valiant men
For Liberty's dear cause to plead or fight,
Denouncing Wrong, upholding Truth and Right.
And as thou wert in years long passed away,
So art thou in thy vigorous prime to-day;
Fair to thy foes, and true to every friend:
Long may Prosperity thy faithful steps attend!
Significance of the local press for local literary cultures
All this poetic activity was amplified by the coverage and patronage of local newspapers and magazines, who added the prestige of print, the magic of seeing one’s scribbled words given the permanence of type in the public document of the newspaper. There was a multiplier effect: the prestige of print multiplied by the cultural capital of poetry made everyone involved – writers and readers - feel better about themselves and where they lived.
Local poetic cultures could flourish without the local press – but it helped, hugely. Publication in the local press, alongside public performance, was the main outlet for these poets – across England, millions of poems by local poets were published in this way. Newspapers boosted the status of poets through encouragement and reviewing, of publications and submitted amateur poetry – they took them seriously. The role of individual journalists with literary interests, such as Abram and John Walker in Blackburn, was very important.
Newspapers occasionally gave financial support to poets, although this was the exception. John Critchley Prince appears to have been paid a regular sum by the Preston Guardian from 1853, whilst living in Blackburn, judging by the quantity of his poetry published there. The arrangement probably began after he wrote to the editor:
I shall be happy to contribute now and then to your paper; and if you could afford to pay me two or three shillings a week, I will engage to supply you with lyrics (weekly), on moral, elevating, and cheerful subjects. They shall be written expressly for your journal… Can you set me a literary task? I will do the best I can.
There was also paid work for local poets at election times, writing political squibs in support of one or other party, or sometimes both. Below is one example, a parody of Thomas Hood’s ‘Song of the Shirt’, presumably written by John Baron, during the 1868 election, published in the Conservative Blackburn Standard:
Abram engineered the exposure of one pen for hire, John Baron, during the 1868 election:
Like the rest of the Blackburn “School” of Poets … “Jack” Baron … wrote election rhymes – squibs, satires, and panegyrics – charged with violent expletives …
Baron was a Tory, writing two or three pieces for the Standard and the Patriot each week during the 3 weeks of the election, while most poets were Liberal supporters, being paid by the candidates to write verses for the Liberal Times. Baron thought the Liberals paid more than the Tories, submitted an anti-Tory rhyme to the Times with accompanying pseudonym, but editor Abram ‘accidentally’ printed his real name beneath the poem. Baron was furious.
The local press was significant in linking linked poets to national literary cultures through the national networks and systems of the local press, enabling their verse to be reprinted in other papers around the country; for more accomplished writers, publication in local newspapers helped publication in metropolitan papers and magazines.
The local press connected readers to writers, giving them an outlet and a loyal following. Local writers were part of the same interpretive communities as their readers, who valued the local poetry of the local press. An obituary of Blackburn’s Billington claimed that
there are those amongst the rank and file of our Blackburn population to whom the homely rhymes of a Billington are more congenial and more dear than the stately and sustained splendours of a Byron, a Tennyson, or a Scott.
Some of the keener readers are revealed in a series of debates about the local press held at a Sunday-night debating club in Blackburn in 1888, in which the quality of poetry and other literary material is one of the criteria for judging newspapers. Many readers memorised local newspaper poetry or quoted it, inc preachers and speakers at public meetings, challenging received ideas about the ephemerality of newspapers – sometimes decades after it was written. Dialect poetry in particular was read and recited at local events and entertainments. As Kirstie Blair demonstrates in her study of Dundee newspaper poetry, knowledge of a local interpretive community is essential for a full understanding of how this verse was read – and used. The fact that these readers treasured and used such poetry, in ways we tend to reserve for only the ‘best’ poetry, challenges our judgments of poetic quality and the limitations of ‘bad art’.
The relatively open publishing platform of the local press encouraged readers to become writers. George Thomas Collins described the importance of the local paper in this autobiographical fragment in Hull’s anthology:
I began life as a brush maker, and am still following that occupation. — I came to Lancashire in 1868, and although I had written, in my childhood and youth, some rhymes that I did not consider fit for print, I don’t suppose I should have ventured to publish any had my esteemed friend, Mr. J. T. Baron, not persuaded me to send one piece to the “Blackburn Times” for publication. It was entitled “Memory and Hope,” and was accepted; as several others were afterwards. I consider it a praiseworthy feature of Blackburn journalism that it encourages and fosters local talent, especially among the workers in this very busy hive of industry. Since then I have had a great number of pieces published in other journals …
This encouragement of working-class poets by the local press may have been one factor in Blackburn’s unusually vibrant literary culture. Finally, the local press fostered a sense of poetic community, and preserved the memory of poets when they died, through obituaries, elegies, bioghraphies and the marking of anniversaries.
Reading and writing poetry was a common activity, for men, women and children of all classes. By providing a publishing platform for tens of thousands of local poets, producing millions of poems, the local paper encouraged ‘poetic behaviour’, treating poetry as a language available to all; they assisted this poetic behavior with public tuition in poetics, through comments on submitted verse and through reviews of poetry volumes, and by inviting contributions and offering prizes.
Local newspapers gave recognition to the more able local bards, shaping their public role as poets and providing a stepping stone to publication in higher-status settings, through their connections to the wider system of poetry publishing. These newspapers traded on the sense of place and local patriotism of their readers, and poetry’s emotional power and cultural capital could be harnessed to their project of giving significance to ordinary provincial places, far from the centres of cultural power, through the prestige of print.
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