The People's Poet: William Barnes of Dorset

By: Alan Chedzoy

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Synopsis: Born the child of an agricultural labourer in Dorset’s Blackmore Vale, by self-education William Barnes (1801-1886) rose to be a lawyer's clerk, a schoolmaster, a much-loved clergyman, and a scholar who could read over seventy languages. He also became the finest example of an English poet writing in a rural dialect. In this book, Alan Chedzoy shows how, uniquely, he presented the lives of pre-industrial rural people in their own language. He also recounts how Barnes’s linguistic studies enabled him to defend the controversial notion that the dialect of the labouring people of Wessex was the purest form of English. Serving both as an anthology and an account of how the poems came to be written, this biography is essential reading for anyone who wants to discover more about the man who, in an obituary, Thomas Hardy described as ‘probably the most interesting link between present and past life that England possessed’.

Book Quality:: Publisher Quality
Book Size:: 224 Pages
ISBN-13:: 9780752472409
Publisher:: The History Press
Date of Addition:: 03/15/24
Copyrighted By:: Alan Chedzoy
Adult content:: No
Language:: English
Has Image Descriptions:: No
Categories:: Nonfiction, Poetry, Biographies and Memoirs, Literature and Fiction, Politics and Government
Submitted By:: Bookshare Staff
Usage Restrictions:: This is a copyrighted book.