Darlington, 1879

? Watson, John (b. 1856), of Longside, Aberdeenshire, railway clerk. Ref: Edwards, 1, 291. [S]

Watson, Richard (1833-1918), lead miner’s son, of Middleton-in-Teesdale, iron ore miner, pub. Poems (1862), revised and expanded as The Poetical Works of Richard Watson, of Woodland Collieries, late of Middleton-in-Teesdale, with a brief sketch of the author (Darlington: William Dresser, 1884), reprinted 1930; Egremont Castle, and miscellaneous poems (Whitehaven, 1868); Rhymes of a Rustic Bard: The Poems and Songs of Richard Watson (Barnard Castle: The Teesdale Mercury, 1979); this edition adds the substantial ‘Middleton-in-Teesdale Fair’. Ref: LC 6, 33-54; Reilly (2000), 486; Reilly (1994), 501; James McTaggart, Around the Hollow Hills [biography of Watson] (Barnard Castle: Teesdale Mercury, 1978); Bridget Keegan, ‘“Incessant toil and hands innumerable”: Mining and Poetry in the Northeast of England’, Victoriographies, 1 (2011), 177-201. [LC 6]

Watson, Thomas, gardener of Lasswade, Midlothian, pub. A Collection of Poems (Edinburgh, 1835). Ref: ?Wilson, II, 540. [S]

Watson, Thomas (1807-75), b. Arbroath, Angus, worked as a weaver then became a house painter, contributed to many Scottish periodicals, pub. Homely pearls at random strung: poems, songs, and sketches (Edinburgh and Arbroath, 1873). Ref: Reilly (2000), 487, Edwards, 2, 220-4. [S]

Watson, Walter (1780-1854), of Chryston, Lanarkshire, cowherd, soldier, weaver, pub. vols of poems and songs in 1808, 1823, 1843, Poems and Songs, Chiefly in the Scottish Dialect (1853); selected works with a memoir by Hugh McDonald (?1853). Ref: ODNB; Glasgow Poets, 164-67; Macleod, 267-69; Wilson, II, 33-5. [S]

Watson, William (fl. 1820-40), of Newcastle upon Tyne, author of the songs ‘Dance to thy Daddy’, ‘Thumping luck to yon Town’, ‘Newcassel Races’ and ‘Newcastle Landlords 1834’. Ref: Allan, 204-14.

Watt, Alexander (b. 1841), of East Kilbride, weaver, slater, day-labourer, from a family of rhymers, pub. in local press, including prize poem on Janet Hamilton. Ref: Murdoch, 366-9; Edwards, 3, 136-41. [S]

Watt, James E. (b. 1839), of Montrose, weaver, pub. Poetical sketches of Scottish life and character (Dundee, 1880). Ref: Edwards 1, 73-77; Reilly (1994), 503, Murdoch, 316-20. [S]

Watt, Walter (b. 1826), of Edinburgh, later of Glasgow, tobacco-spinner, violin-maker, pub. Sketches in prose and poetry (Glasgow, 1881); The art of violin making [prose work] (1892). Ref: Reilly (1994), 503; Bisset, 145-50; Edwards, 8, 225-30 [S]

Watt, William (1792-1859), ‘peasant poet and precentor’ (Edwards), of West Linton, Peebleshire, herder, weaver, singer, pub. vol. of songs in 1835, and Comus and Cupid (1844); Poems on Sacred and Other Subjects (1860). Ref: inf. Kaye Kossick; Edwards, 2, 51-5, Murdoch, 144-6. [S]

Watts, John George, of London, Billingsgate fish market porter, pub. Fun, feeling, and fancy: being a series of lays and lyrics (London, 1861), The blacksmith‘s daughter, and other poems (London, 1874), A lay of a Cannibal Island And other Poems, Gay and grave (London: Judd and Co. Ltd, 1887). Ref: Reilly (2000), 487; Reilly (1994), 503.

Watts, Thomas (1845-87), of Wexford, tailor, pub. Woodland echoes (Kelso, 1880). Ref: Edwards, 3, 70-76 and 12, xxi-xxii; Crockett, 190-7; Reilly (1994), 504. [I] [S]

Webb, John (‘Kenrick Prescott’), weaver of Haverhill, Suffolk, pub. Mildenhall (1771), Poems (1772), Haverhill, a Descriptive Poem and Other Poems (London: printed for the author and sold by J. Nunn, 1810), xxiv, 119, includes subscription list with numerous local residents, and is described as ‘poems by a journeyman weaver, born in the vale of obscurity...The poem is in the form of a narrative saga, with numerous direct or oblique References to local people, places, and events. As poetry it probably has little merit: as an illustration of working-class emancipation it may have rather more’ (John Drury Rare Books catalogue 104, 2000-2001, item 149). Haverhill, a long locodescriptive poem, dedicates several pages to memorialising Webb's friend James Chambers (qv); there was a seond edition in 1859. Ref: COPAC; Cranbrook, 243.

? Webbe [Webb], Cornelius Francis (1789-1858), sometimes referred to by contemporaries as ‘Corny’ Webb, of Holborn, London, press proof-reader, friend of Keats, pub. poems in the Quarterly Review and New Monthly Magazine, as well as volumes Summer; An Invocation to Sleep: Fairy revels; and Songs and Sonnets (London, 1821); Sonnets, Amatory, Incidental, and Descriptive, with other Poems (1820); Lyric Leaves (1832). He later published successful essay collections and other prose works. Ref: ODNB; Cross, 133; Radcliffe; Sutton, 983 (letters).

Webber, James B, of Melrose, pub. Rambles around the Eildons (Hawick, 1883, 2nd edn 1895). Ref: Reilly (1994), 506. [S]

? Webber, John L. (‘The Dartmoor Poet’), pub. Poems on Widecombe-in-the-Moor and neighbourhood (Devonport, c. 1876). Ref: Reilly (2000), 488.

? Webster, Ann, blind poet, pub. Solitary Musings (London, 1825), [BL 11642.bb.8]. Ref: MacDonald Shaw, 95-6; Jackson (1993), 363. [F]

Webster, David (1787-1837), of Paisley, weaver, pub. an Ode to the memory of Tannahill (1828); Original Scottish Poems; Humorous and Satirical (Paisley, 1824), Original Scottish Rhymes with Humorous and Satirical Songs (Paisley, 1835), pamphlet: An Address to Fame, or Hints on the Improvement of Weaving, newspaper pubs. Ref: Brown, I, 181-88; Wilson, II, 540-41; Douglas, 304; Leonard, 92-102; NCSTC. [S]

Webster, George (b. 1846), of Stuartfield, Aberdeenshire, herd lad, ploughman. Ref: Edwards, 10, 327-31. [S]

Wedderburn, Alexander (b or d? 1836), of Aberdeenshire, farm labourer, ?shoemaker, pub. in the anthology, Poems by the People. Ref: Edwards, 6, 238-41. [S]

Weekes, James Eyre (fl. 1745-56), shoemaker poet, of Dublin, pub. Poems on Several Occasions (Dublin, 1743), The Cobler’s Poem. To A Certain Noble Peer, Occasioned by the Bricklayer’s Poem (Dublin, 1745), The Resurrection (Dublin, 1745), The amazon, or female courage vindicated (Dublin, 1745), Rebellion. A poem (Dublin, 1745), A Rhapsody on the stage or, the art of playing. In imitation of Horace’s Art of Poetry (1746), The gentlemen’s hourglass, or an introduction to chronology (1750), A new geography of Ireland (1752), The Young Grammarian’s Magazine of Words (1753), Solomon’s Temple, an oratorio (1753). Ref: LC 2, 41-8; Christmas, 134-6. [LC 2] [I]

Welsh, William, Peebleshire cottar of Romanno Bridge, pub. Poetical and prose works, new enlarged edition (Edinburgh, 1856, 3rd edn Edinburgh, 1875). Ref: Reilly (2000), 489. [S]

? West, Jane (née Iliffe, 1758-1852), of London, moved to Desborough, Northamptonshire, farmer’s wife, self-taught poet, patronised by Percy, wrote novels, poetry, children's literature, and conduct tracts. Pub. Miscellaneous Poetry, Written at an Early Period of Life (London, 1786); The Humours of Brighthelmstone: a Poem (1788); Miscellaneous Poems and a Tragedy [‘Edmund’] (1791); An Elegy on the Death of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke (1797); Poems and Plays (vols. 1 and 2, 1799; 3 and 4, 1805); and The Mother: a Poem in Five Books (1799). She also wrote numerous novels, including The Advantages of Education (1793, under the pseudonym 'Prudentia Homespun') and her most popular work, A Gossip's Story (1796), as well as an account of a tour in Wales and Ireland that includes several poems (manuscript owned by University of Cambridge, item in Add.738). Ref: ODNB; Radcliffe; Hold, 152-54; Rizzo, 243, Jackson, 364-5, Lonsdale (1989), 379-85; Andrew Ashfield (ed), Romantic Women Poets, 1770-1838 (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1995), 153; Paula R. Feldman, British Women Poets of the Romantic Era, 1770-1840 (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1997), 792-5; Backscheider & Ingrassia, 889; Sutton, 991. [F]

Westbury, Eliza (1808-28), of Hackleton, Northamptonshire, who `During the last two years of her life’ wrote ‘about one hundred and fifty Hymns, besides other poetry’; these were ‘composed while she was earning her living at lace-making and which she used to write at her leisure’. Pub. Hymns; by a Northamptonshire village female. To which is added, a short account of her life (Northampton, 1828). Ref Sibyl Phillips, Glorious Hope: Women and Evangelical Religion in Kent and Northamptonshire, 1800-1850 (Northamptonshire: Compton Towers Publishing, 2004), 203-65 and ‘An Introduction to the Life, Hymns and Poetry of a Northampton Lacemaker: Eliza Westbury (1808-1828)’, The Hymn Society Bulletin of Great Britain and Ireland Bulletin 17 (2005), 309-18; Nancy Cho, ‘“The Ministry of Song”: Unmarried British Women’s Hymn-Writing, 1730-1936’, PhD dissertation, University of Durham, 2007; Johnson, item 957. [F]

? Westray, C., Chartist poet. Ref: Kovalev, 100-1; Scheckner, 318-19. [C]

Westwood, James (b. 1850), of Alloa, piecer (weaver), pub. ?a volume (but nothing on COPAC or Google books). Ref: Edwards, 8, 258-63. [S]

Whalley, Robert West (b. 1848), of Blackburn, weaver from age 10, overlooker, local and dialect poet. Ref: Hull, 290-302.

Wheatley, Phillis (1753?-1784), of Boston, MA, African-American slave, author of Poems on Various Subjects, Religious and Moral (1773; Dobell 2004-5). Ref: ODNB; Gents. Mag. XLIII (1773) 226; Lonsdale (1984), 616, 851; ESTC; TLS, 13 June 1986, 649; Dobell, Jackson (1993), 366-9; Basker, 170-82; Vincent Carretta, ‘Phillis Wheatley’s First Effort’, PMLA, 125, no. 3 (May 2010), 795–97. [F]

Wheeler, James (c. 1718-88), labouring man, pub. The Rose of Sharon: a Poem by James Wheeler, a Labouring Man (London, 1795), a ‘dire volume’ posthumously published to raise money for widow. Ref: LC 3, 177-8. [LC 3]

Wheeler, Thomas Martin (1811-62), of London, woolcomber, Chartist, poet and novelist, an autodidact who ‘wandered through England’ and ‘tried his hand at various occupations’ (Schwab); contributor to Northern Star and later The People’s Paper. Ref: Ashraf (1978), I, 25; Kovalev, 102-3;Scheckner, 320-1, 344-5; Schwab, 220. [C]

Whitaker, John Appleyard, of Haworth, of a well-known Methodist family, apprenticed to a Leeds Draper, later an assistant at Cleckheaton, then in business himself at Great Horton. His father died when he was 13. he wrote and popularly recited poetry from childhood; first poem on Haworth church; other poems on religious themes, and took to publishing in local papers. Forshaw prints ‘To Our Bards’ and ‘The Preacher’. Ref: Forshaw, 168-70 (includes photograph).

Whitaker, William (fl. 1870-82), of Blackburn, painter, dialect and local poet. Ref: Hull, 205-13.

White, George (1764-1836), former slave turned Methodist preacher, became literate at age 42; pub. a narrative of his life in 1810 that includes poetry. Ref: Basker, 687-8.

White, Henry Kirke (1785-1806), Nottingham butcher’s son, famous as a tragic prodigy, won two prizes from the Monthly Preceptor (1800) and wrote regularly for the Monthly Mirror, became ill and died while at Cambridge. Pub. Clifton Grove, a Sketch in Verse, with other Poems (1803) and a posthumous collected works by Southey for the benefit of his family (The Remains of Henry Kirke White...with an Account of his Life, 2 vols, 1807; eventually went to ten editions, including two in America). Ref: ODNB; Unwin, 118-19; Maidment (1983), 84; Meyenberg, 229-30; Richardson, 257-8; Goodridge (1999), item 125; Vincent, 145-7; Miles, X, 81; Basker, 625; Sutton, 993-4.

White, Isabella (fl. 1869), of Laurencekirk, powerloom weaver, published The Lovers of the Mountain and Other Poems (Brechin: Printed by D. Burns, Advertiser Office, 1869). The prefatory material offers her sincere thanks to ladies and gentlemen who have encouraged her to publish. Her volume contains romantic ballads, such as ‘On Cluny Castle, Invernesshire,’ and other verses, among them ‘On Laurencekirk—The Birthplace of the Authoress,’ which briefly describes her childhood. Ref: inf. Florence Boos. [F] [S]

White, John (b. 1859), of Whitburn, tailor, violinist, comic songwriter, poems in Bisset. Ref: Bisset, 268-70. [S]

? White, Robert (1802-74), farmer’s son of Roxburghshire, poet and antiquarian. Pub. The Wind. A Poem (1853); England. A Poem (1856); his prose ‘Autobiographical Notes’ were published in a handset limited edition of 90 in 1966 (Newcastle upon Tyne: Eagle Press, the University Library). Ref: ODNB; Wilson, II, 257-60, Welford, III, 604-9; Burnett et al (1984), 336-7 (no. 749a); Sutton, 994-5. (Johnson, item 962 may relate.) [S]

? White, Walter (1811-93), of Reading, upholsterer, librarian and writer, emigrated to America (New York and Poughkeepsie) but returned in 1839, then moved to London and became a librarian at the Royal Society. Pub. The Prisoner and his dream: a ballad (?1885). Ref: ODNB; Reilly (1994), 510.

Whitehead, Harry Buckley (1890-1966), of Diggle, Oldham, dialect poet, millworker from age 13 to retirement, pub. Rhymes of a Village Poet (1963). Ref: Hollingworth (1977), 156. [OP]

Whitehead, John (1797-1879), of Duns, shoemaker, pub. in the newspapers. Ref: Crockett, 131-2. [S]

? Whitelaw, James (1840-87), of Dundee, compositor, sub-editor of the People’s Friend. Ref: Edwards, 11, 256-62. [S]

Whitmore, William (fl. 1850-59), Chartist poet, housepainter and friend of William Jones, correspondent of Leatherland (qv), published poems in Cooper’s Journal (1850) and Firstlings, a collection of his verse appeared in 1852 (Leicester and London: John Chapman). Through his friendship with John Roebuck, a member of the London Working Men’s College, his work was brought to the note of Tom Hughes, who sponsored the publication of a further selection of his verse in 1859 under the title Gilbert Marlowe and other poems, with a preface by the author of ‘Tom Brown's school days’ (Cambridge: Macmillan, 1859). Ref: Schwab, 220; Ashton & Roberts, 62; Star Of Freedom, 7 August 1852, 3; inf. from contributor. [C] [—Ned Newitt]

Whittell, Thomas (1683-1736), of Northumberland, ‘The Northumbrian poet’, ‘The Licentious Poet’, miller and humorous poet, pub. The Midford Galloway (Newcastle?, 1790?); Poetical Works (1815). Ref: ESTC; Welford, III, 613-15.

Whittett, Robert (b. 1829), of Perth, worked in Aberdeen and Edinburgh as a printer, returned to Perth then emigrated, in 1869 purchasing a plantation in Virginia to set up in business, became senior partner in a publishing firm; pub. The Brighter Side of Suffering and Other Poems (1882). Ref: Ross, 110-16. [S]

Wickenden, William S., farm labourer of Etloe in the Forest of Dean, ‘The Bard of the Forest’, ‘as little blessed by education a fortune’, friend and neighbour of Edward Jenner, poet and novelist, pub. Count Glarus, of Switzerland. Interspersed with some Pieces of Poetry (Gloucester, 1819), Bleddyn: a Welch national tale (London: Baldwin, Cradock and Joy, 1821, two edns), Prose and poetry of the Bard of the Forest (Cambridge: Harwood & Hall, 1825). Ref: James Burmester Catalogue 47, items 168-9, 254; inf. Bob Heyes.

? Wight, William, Cottage Poems (Edinburgh: James Ballantyne & Co, 1820). Ref: Jackson (1985); information of Bob Heyes. [S]

Wightman, Margaret Theresa, born in Ireland, lived in Dundee, mantle and millinery shopworker, pub. The Faithful Shepherd, and other poems (Edinburgh and Glasgow, 1876). Her poems are accomplished; several praise a Dundee pastor and one is about ‘The Factory Girl.’ Ref: Reilly (2000), 495; Boos (2008), 22; inf. Florence Boos. [F] [I] [S]

? Wildman, Abraham (1803-70), of Keighley, of Quaker stock, wrote verses early and worked for the Board of Guardians before becoming involved in the shorter hours movement. As its secretary he wrote to the Duke of Wellington among others. He drew up petitions in defence of factory workers. He was later in business (unsuccessfully) and worked as a wool-sorter. He suffered a number of family misfortunes; his daughter was crippled in a mill accident, his son disappeared to Australia and his wife died. He became unable to work and a subscription was raised for his Lays of Hungary to alleviate poverty. Pub. Miscellaneous Poems (London: Simpkin and Marshall, 1829); Lays of Hungary. (dnk; untraced on Google, COPAC or Library of Congress catalogue). Holroyd prints his poem ‘Labour’; mentioned by Ashraf; Forshaw prints his ‘The Factory Child’s Complaint’ and ‘Lines Composed on the Banks of the Aire’. Through the intervention of Sir Titus Salt he was alloted an almshouse, whre he moved with his disabled daughter, and saved from the workhouse, which he had feared. Ref: Forshaw, 171-4; Holroyd, 122; Ashraf (1978), I, 37.