Darlington, 1879

Bamford, Samuel (1788-1872), of Middleton, Lancashire, radical weaver, member of the ‘Sun Inn’ group of Manchester poets, pub. The Weaver Boy; or Miscellaneous Poetry (Manchester 1819); Hours in the Bowers. Poems (Manchester, 1834); Homely rhymes, poems and reminiscences (1843, rev. and enlarged edn London and Manchester, 1864); Passages in the Life of a Radical (1860), two vols; Account of the Arrest and Imprisonment of Samuel Bamford (1817), Walks in South Lancashire (1844), and Tawk o'seawth Lankeshur (1850). Ref: LC 5, 123-38; ODNB; NCSTC; Harland, 220-8, 289-91, 353-5, 411-13, 479-80, 485-8; Vicinus (1973), 741; Vicinus (1974), 149; Burnett et al (1984), 17-18, 356 (nos. 38-90, 792; Maidment (1987), 232-42; Hollingworth (1977), 151; Zlotnick, 179-80; Johnson, item 46; Reilly (2000), 27; Sales (2002), 94-7; Sutton, 36 (manuscript of a glossary of local dialect and numerous letters). [LC 5]

Banks, George Linnaeus (1821-81), of Birmingham, cabinet casemaker, salesman, editor; married to Isabella Varley Banks (qv), another poet, novelist and member of the ‘Sun Inn’ group. Pub. in magazines and a volume titled Daisies in the Grass (1865). Also edited the following: Harrogate Advertiser, Birmingham Mercury, Dublin Daily Express, Durham Chronicle, Sussex Mercury, and Windsor Royal Standard. Ref: ODNB; Sutton, 37 (several manuscripts of poems and stories; numerous letters); Poole, 236-41.

Banks of Bancks, John (1709-1751), of Sonning, Berkshire, weaver, poet and miscellaneous writer, pub. The Weaver's Miscellany (1730, in imitation of Duck) and Miscellaneous Works in Verse and Prose (1738), and various nonfictions. Ref: LC 1, 181-230; ODNB; Røstvig, 155-7; Klaus (1985), 15-16; Goodridge (1990), 19-20; Christmas, 21, 96-106. [LC 1]

Bannard, James, ‘A poor man from Buxton, who made a living selling his verses’; wr. ‘Derbyshire Hills’ (‘At length my wandering feet have brought / Me on this Derby Hill’), printed in L.F.W. Jewitt, The Ballads and Songs of Derbyshire. (London: Bemrose and Lothian; Derby: Bemrose and Sons, 1867), 243-6. Ref: Jewitt as cited; inf. Dawn Whatman.

? Bannerman, Anne (1765-1829), ‘crooked poetess’ of Edinburgh, daughter of a ‘running stationer’, a person who sold ballads in the street; destitute in the 1790s following the death of her mother and brother; contributed to the ‘Poetical Register’; friend of Robert Anderson. Elfenbein suggests she may be a gay poet of labouring-class origins and gives birth date as ‘1780?’; endured poverty, became a governess to the Beresford family in Exeter; pub. Poems by Anne Bannerman (Edinburgh: Mundell & Sons, 1800); Tales of Superstition and Chivalry (London: Vernor & Hood, 1802); revised subscription edn of Poems (1807). Ref: Meyenberg, 200; Backscheider, 403; Backscheider & Ingrassia, 868; Gifford & Macmillan, 679; Andrew Elfenbein, ‘Lesbianism and Romantic Genius’, English Literary History (ELH), 63, no. 4 (1996), 929-57; Sutton, 37 (letters); inf. about her father from Wikipedia entry. [F] [S]

? Banton, John, of Rutland, poet of humble origins; pub. The Village Wreath (1822), Excursions of Fancy (1824); subscribers to the latter include John Clare. Ref: Crossan, 37; Powell, items 106-7; inf. Greg Crossan and Bob Heyes.

? Barber, Mary (c. 1685-1755/7), of Dublin, English woollen draper’s wife, supported and encouraged by Swift. In 1734, she was arrested ‘for possession of manuscript copies of some of Swift’s political poems attacking Walpole's administration’ (ODNB); she was also accused of (and never cleared for) forging Swift’s signature on a letter about her to Queen Caroline. She contributed to numerous magazines and anthologies including: Tunbrigialia, or, Tunbridge Miscellanies, for the Year 1730 (anonymously), Gentleman's Magazine (1737) and Poems by Eminent Ladies (1755). Pub. Poems on several occasions (London, for C. Rivington, 1734; over 900 subscribers; included six posthumous and previously unpublished poems by Constantia Grierson [qv]). Ref: ODNB; Rowton, 117-18; O’Donoghue, 18; Lonsdale (1989), 118-29; Fullard, 296-300, 548-9; Burmester, item 357 and 107 (image); Christmas, 115; Carpenter, 194; Backscheider, 404; Backscheider & Ingrassia, 868-9; Christopher Fanning, ‘The Voices of the Dependent Poet: The Case of Mary Barber’, Women’s Writing, 8, no. 1 (2001), 81-97; Sutton, 38 (letters). [I] [F]

Barclay, Andrew, of Dundee, stone mason, later and at the time of his death a city missionary, pub. Sacred Poems (1842). Ref: Reid, Bards, 30. [S]

Barham, George, shepherd, pub. The Christian’s Last Hope; Or, Pathetic Pieces on Departed Friends (London, 1866). Ref: Reilly (2000), 28.

? Barker, John Thomas (b. 1844), of Bramley, near Leeds, in commerce from fifteen, sometimes wrote in dialect; pub. The Midsummer Day’s Dream (London and Leeds, 1869). Ref: Reilly (2000), 28; England 35.

Barker, Robert (b. 1729), of Wigan, apprenticed to a Liverpool shipwright at 14, later a ship’s carpenter, pub. The Unfortunate Shipwright, Or Cruel Captain. Being a Faithful Narrative of the Unparallel’d Sufferings of Robert Barker, Late Carpenter on Board the Thetis Snow, of Bristol, in a Voyage to the Coast of Guinea and Antigua (London: Printed for, and Sold by the author, nd; editions of 1758, 1759, 1762 and 1795 identified). Ref undated edition of principal work via Google Books.

? Barlow, John, of Cheadle, Cheshire, pub. Homely Rhymes and Sayings, Humbly Dedicated to the Working Classes of England, the Colliers in Particular (Cheadle, ?1879). Ref: Reilly (2000), 29.

Barlow, Thomas (1826-1904), of Radcliffe, Lancs., ‘The Bard of Longdendale’, calico printer, later ‘one of the first working-man magistrates of Glossop’, pub. A pic-nic at Woodhead: Scenes around Castleton, and other poems (Manchester and London, 1867), Poems (London, 1894). Ref: Reilly (1994), 30-1, Reilly (2000), 29.

? Barmby, John Goodwin or Goodwyn (1820-81), of Yoxford, Suffolk, ‘comprehensively educated autodidact, a Chartist agitator, writer of poems and pamphlets, socialist and feminist’ (Klaus), Owenist, Unitarian minister, pub. The Poetry of spring: a poem (London, 1860); The return of the swallow, and other poems (London, 1864). Ref: ODNB; Ashraf (1975), 228-30; Maidment (1987), 213; Klaus (1985), 37-40, 42 (discussing his utopian writings); Cranbrook, 128-9, 158-9; Reilly (2000), 29; Andrews, 87; Schwab 184. [C]

Barnard, Andrew (b. 1860), of Grangemouth, son of the mineworker poet Francis Barnard (qv), worked with his father, disabled in an accident, later a weaver, joiner and musician, then engine-keeper, pub. poems in newspapers. Ref: Bisset, 271-6; Edwards, 13, 132-5. [S]

Barnard, Francis (b. 1834), of Woodend, Armadale, mineworker poet, father of Andrew Barnard (qv), pub. Sparks from a miner’s lamp: being poems and songs (Airdrie, 1875), Chirps frae the engine lum; ghaist o' Gartmorn, and other poems (Bathgate, 1889). Ref: Edwards, 10, 290; Bisset, 191-202; COPAC lists copies in Aberdeen University Library. [S]

? Barnes, William (1801-1886), sixth child of a Dorset farmer in reduced circumstances, major regional, rural and dialect poet sometimes associated with the ‘peasant poet’ tradition, teacher and philologist, ordained at Salisbury Cathedral in 1847. Publications: Poems in the Dorset Dialect (1844, 5 edns by 1866); Poems, Partly of Rural Life (in National English) (1846); Hwomely Rhymes: a Second Collection of Dorset Poems in 1850, Third Collection of Poems in Dorset Dialect (1863), and Poems of Rural Life in Common English (1868). There are several useful selections of Barnes in print, and a scholarly edition from Oxford is in progress. Ref: ODNB; Sutton, 40 (manuscripts of prose and poetry; numerous letters); useful recent sources include T. L. Burton, William Barnes’s Dialect Poems: A Pronunciation Guide (Adelaide, Australia and Provo, Utah: Chaucer Studio Press, 2010); Sue Edney, ‘William Barnes’s Place and Dialects of Connection’, in Class and the Canon: Constructing Labouring-Class Poetry and Poetics, 1780-1900, ed. Kirstie Blair and Mina Gorji (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2012), 191-210; T. L. Burton and K. K. Ruthven (eds), The Complete Poems of William Barnes, Volume I: Poems in the Broad Form of the Dorset Dialect (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2013).

Barnet, James (b. 1825), printer, emigrated to America, lived in Chicago, returned to Scotland to live in Kingsmuir, Forfar. Ref: Reid, Bards, 30-1. [S]

Baron, John (b. 1823), of Blackburn, handloom weaver then factory operative, published a collection of poems jointly with the printer James Walkden, Flowers of Many Hues, in 1847. Ref: Hull, 85-100.

Baron, John Thomas (‘Jack O’Ann’s’, b. 1856), of Blackburn, shopworker, iron turner and fitter, prolific dialect poet, brother to William Baron (his nephew Joseph Baron was also a dialect poet—see Hull, 386-404—but is not a ‘labouring class’ poet). Ref: Hull, 362-86, Maidment (1987), 351-2.

Baron, William (‘Bill o’ Jacks’, 1865-1927), of Blackpool then Blackburn, factory worker, dialect ‘poet of the people’, pub. Bits o’ Broad Lancashire (Blackburn and Manchester, 1888). Ref: Hull, 429-39; Maidment (1987), 269-70, 351-2; Hollingworth (1977), 151.

? Barr, G. James (1781-1860), of Tarbolton, South Ayrshire, weaver and composer, worked for a Glasgow publisher, set poems by his friend Robert Tannahill to music and composed the tune that inspired ‘Waltzing Matilda’. Ref. Knox; inf. Bridget Keegan; Wikipedia; a letter from Tannahill to Barr of 6 Jan 1811 is reproduced on the ‘Robert Tannahill Commemoration Website’ [S]

? Barr, John (b. 1812), of Paisley, manufacturer’s son, mechanical engineer, emigrated to New Zealand in 1852, pub. Poems and Songs, Descriptive and Lyrical (Edinburgh, 1861). Ref: Brown, I, 427-29; Edwards, 12, 284-90. [S]

Barrass, Alexander (1856- 1929), of Blackhall Mill, County Durham, coal miner, tells us in the preface to his first volume that he left school at nine and ‘never saw a grammar’ until he was nineteen. Pub. The Derwent Valley, and Other Poems (Newcastle upon Tyne: J.M. Carr, 1887), and The Pitman’s Social Neet (Consett: J. Dent, 1897); also wrote for the Newcastle Chronicle. Barrass’s first volume is equally divided between an elegant and learned topographical poem inspired by ‘an earnest love’, and which the author describes as a five year project of ‘self-improvement as much as self-amusement’, concerned with ‘the useful as much as the ornamental’; and some occasional and other verses, all largely in standard English. The second volume is quite different; the main text is a neglected dialect classic, a coalminer’s social poem in the tradition of Edward Chicken’s The Collier’s Wedding (1730), Thomas Wilson’s The Pitman’s Pay (1826), and Matthew Tate’s ‘Pit Life in 1893-4’ (pub. in Tate’s Songs, Poems and Ballads, 1898), all qqv. The ‘Social Neet’ is set in a pub in Stanley, and is the occasion for a sequence of songs and recitations from different speakers, as well as being a poetical device for gathering them in a sociable poetical portmanteau, like Robert Bloomfield’s late collection May Day with the Muses (1822). Each contribution contrives to relate to one of the main roles in pit work, from ‘The Driver’ to ‘The Deppity’ (these are carefully listed on his Wikipedia page). Barrass suffered a mental breakdown in the mid-1890s, and was institutionalised in Sedgfield Asylum, where he would remain for his last 35 years. The 1897 volume was evidently put into print by friends and admirers including the local Member of Parliament who contributed its brief introduction, he describes it as ‘the last endeavour of the genius of poor Barrass’, so whatever mental disaster had overcome him was evidently already regarded as having put him beyond rescue. In the preface to his first volume Barrass thanks two fellow local poets, Joshua Lax for books, and John Rowell Waller (qv) for encouraging his poetical efforts; the third canto of The Derwent Valley is dedicated to his partner, ‘Lizzie’. A hand-corrected and signed copy held by the present contributor [JG] is inscribed to a G. R. Hedley, dated 9 May 1888. Barrass’s first printer/publisher, J. M. Carr of Newcastle upon Tyne, also published the Elswick mineworker James Anderson’s (qv) volume. Ref Reilly (1994), 31; Wikipedia; Bridget Keegan and John Goodridge, ‘Modes and Methods in Three Nineteenth-Century Mineworker Poets’, Philological Quarterly, 92: 2 (2013), 225-50.

Barrie, James (b. 1753-1829), shepherd, journeyman wright, ‘The Earl of Buchan’s own poet-laureate’ (Sir Walter Scott), pub. Poems for the Use of Children (1808); Poems on Various Subjects (Kelso, 1817); Riverside Poems (1821). Ref: Crockett, 97-8; Johnson, item 53. [S]

Bartlett, Frederick R. (fl. 1886), ‘a working man of the Black Country, living at Bilston, Staffordshire’, pub. Flashes from Forge & Foundry: A Volume of Poems (Bilston, Staffs., 1886). Bartlett claimed his volume to be ‘Under the Distinguished Patronage of the Right Hon. W. E. Gladstone, Premier; and H. H. Fowler, esq, M.P.’ Ref: LC 6, 339-42; Poole & Markland, 462; Reilly (1994), 32. [LC 6]

? Basse, or Bas, William, (c. 1583–1653?), of ?Northamptonshire, retainer to Lord Wenham of Thame Park; may have attended Oxford; wrote an ‘Elegy on Mr. William Shakespeare’ and ‘The Angler’s Song’ included in Walton’s Compleat Angler; also pub. Sword and Buckler, or, The Serving-Mans Defence (1602); Three Pastoral Elegies of Anander, Anetor, and Muridella (1602); posthumously pub. Poetical Works of William Basse (1893). Ref: ODNB; Radcliffe; Hold, 29-31. [OP]

? Bealey, Richard Rome (1828-87), of Rochdale, master bleacher, draper, businessman, dialect and temperance poet, lived in Manchester and Nottingham, pub. After-business jottings: Poems (London and Manchester, 1864, 2nd edition ?1867); Field Flowers and City Chimes: Poems (London and Manchester, 1866); Old Hall Rhymes (London and Manchester, 1868); Poems (c. 1870); Later-life Jottings in Verse and Prose (Manchester and London, 1884). Ref: Harland, 260-2, 295-7, 303-9, 321, 332-3, 385-90, 392, 394-5, 425-6, 449-51, 480-1; Hollingworth (1977), 151, Vicinus (1969), 30; Reilly (1994); 35, Reilly (2000), 34.

Beattie, George (1786-1823), of St Cyrus, Kincardineshire, son of a crofter and fisherman, trained to be a mechanic, author of ‘John o’ Arnha’, pub. John o Arnaha’. To which is added the Murderit Mynstrell and other poems (Montrose, 1818). Ref: ODNB; Reid, Bards, 35-40; Wilson, II, 87-90; George Beattie, of Montrose, a poet, a humourist, and a man of genius (1863). [S]

Beattie, William (c. 1756-1801), flax-dresser of Aberdeen; pub. Fruits of Time Parings: being a collection of original poems, Scotch and Englishl; composed to fill up a few of the author’s blank hours—and respectfully offered to the public (Aberdeen: W. Rettie, 1801). Ref: Johnson, item 61. [S]

Begg, Peter (1819-85), of Dundee, shoemaker, a founder of the Dundee Literary Institute, and in 1865 founded the movment (and later drafted the bill) that led to the Scottish Libraries Act. Ref: Edwards, 4, 209-12; Reid, Bards, 46-7. [S]

Beggs, Thomas (1789-1847), of Glenwherry, Co. Antrim, sailor, weaver, bleacher, pub. Miscellaneous Pieces in Verse, (1819); Rathin: a descriptive poem (Belfast, 1820); The Rhyming Pedagogue (1821); The Momento, a Choice Variety of Original Poems (1828); The Minstrel’s Offering (1834), The Second Part of the Minstrel’s Offering (1836); Nights in a Garrett [prose work] (1830). Ref: ; O’Donoghue, 24; Hewitt; Johnson 46, no. 82; Kate Newman (Dictionary of Ulster Biography, http://www.newulsterbiography.co.uk/index.php/home/viewPerson/75 [I]

? Bell, Dugald, head gardener’s son, secretary and president of the Vale of Leven Mechanics’ Institute. Ref: Macleod, 74-80. [S]

Bell, John, ‘self taught, without any regular education’, pub. Cartland-Craigs: a poem (Edinburgh: C. Stewart, for William Blackwood, J. Annan, and W, Robertson, Lanark, 1816) viii, 79, [3]. Ref: crjohnson.com, 27 November 2001. [S]

Bell, Thomas (1766-1824), of Ceres, Fife, of humble birth; ‘Ballad’ and ‘Song’ in Edwards. Ref: Edwards, 2, 55-7. [S]

Bell, William ‘Billy’ (1862-1941), roadman and poet, of Redesdale, Northumberland, poems collected in [William Bell,] Susanne Ellingham and John Handle, Billy Bell, Redesdale Roadman, Border Bard: His Life, Times and Poetry (Seaton Burn: Northern Heritage, 2013), ‘a large selection of poems and a biography of Billy Bell’. In 1885 Bell was employed by his local council to maintain an eight-mile stretch of road from Carter bar to Rochester. Bell lived nearly all his life in a cottage in Byrness; filled many exercise books with poems, writing 360 in all on nature, the landscape, rural life and people; including three on the annual Bellingham Show and poems on fishing, his sciatica, and two from 1905 on the coming of the motor car. His poems often ‘join a sequence of thoughts after day’s working on road maintenance’ (folk musician Johnny Handle, who rediscovered the poems in the 1980s), and Bell had a particular gift for dialect poetry, often comic in tone. From about 1904 his poems were often published in the ‘Original Poetry’ spot in the local newspaper, the Hexham Courant. Ref: ‘Northern Heritage’ catalogue, 2014; Tony Henderson, ‘North’s rural poet is on the road to recognition at last’, Newcastle Journal, 27 March 2013, J2, 24 (includes a photograph of Bell. [OP]

? Belson, Mary (later Mary Elliott, 1794?-1870), Quaker, Looking-glass Maker and children’s writer, pub. The Mice and their Pic Nic... (London: Private, 1810), and many other works for children, using poetry as an educational medium. Ref: Jackson (1985); Jackson (1993), 116-19; Marjorie Moon, The Children's Books of Mary (Belson) Elliott: A Bibliography (Winchester, Hampshire : St. Paul's bibliographies, 1987); Philip D. Jordan, ‘The Juvenilia of Mary Belson Elliott: A List with Notes’, Bulletin of the New York Public Library, 39 (1935). 869-81; inf Dawn Whatman. [F]

? Benger, Elizabeth Ogilvy (bap. 1775-1827), of Wells, Somerset, daughter of a navy purser who ‘read open books in shop windows, returning each day when the page had been turned’, pub. The Female Geniad; a Poem (London, 1791), which mentions Mary Collier, Mary Deverell, Constantia Grierson and Ann Yearsley (qqv; the latter misnamed Kearsley), as well as other women writers; ‘A Poem, Occasioned by the Abolition of the Slave Trade’ in Poems on the Abolition of the Slave Trade by James Montgomery, James Graham and E. Benger (London, 1809), 101-41; also wrote novels and biographies. Ref: ODNB; Jackson (1993), 25-6; Basker, 620-2; inf Dawn Whatman. [F]

Bennet, John (fl. 1774-96, d. 1803), shoemaker of Woodstock, Oxford. ~ Bennet worked as a Journeyman shoemaker and succeeded his father as parish clerk at Woodstock. He also ostensibly inherited his father’s musical penchant, declaring in the preface to his poems: ‘Witness my early acquaintance with the pious strains of Sternhold and Hopkins, under that melodious psalmodist my honoured Father’ (Ditchfield 1907). Bennet received guidance in improving his rhymes from Oxford Professor of Poetry Thomas Warton – the curate of the town and customer in Bennet’s shop – and under his patronage accumulated an extensive list of subscribers for Poems on Several Occasions (1774). ~ Although Southey (1831, 122) asserts, ‘There is nothing in his poems which deserves to be extracted for its own sake’, Ditchfield (1907) argues that despite Bennet’s plain modesty concerning his poetical faculties, his verses – which are largely marked by simple rhymes and rustic themes – are ‘not without merit or humour’. As for Bennet’s character, ‘The Monthly Review’ (July-Dec 1774, 483) notes: ‘Unlike the raft of the Crispinian fraternity, he seems to have a sense of virtue and religion; to spiritualise his profession’. Bennet states that the motive for publishing the poems was to allow him to ‘rear an infant offspring and to drive away all anxious solicitude from the breast of a most amiable wife.’ ~ Bennet concludes his first volume with the humorous lines: ‘So may our cobler rise by friendly aid, / Be happy and successful in his trade; / His awl and pen with readiness be found, / To make or keep our understandings sound.’ ~ In 1796, Bennet published Redemption – dedicated to Dr. Mavor of Woodstock – which Ditchfield (1907) considers ‘a noble poem, far exceeding in merit his first essay’. Bennet died in Woodstock in 1803. Pub. Poems on Several Occassions (1774) Printed for the author, and sold by T. Evans...; J. Southern ...; by Messr. Prince, Fletcher, and Parker ..., in Oxford; and by the author, in Woodstock (full text available on Google Book Search); Redemption, a Poem (1796) In two books. Woodstock, Banbury, London. Ref: LC 2, 273-96; NCBEL II; ESTC; Critical Review, 37, 473; Southey, 122-4; Winks, 297-9; Christmas, 18, 210-12, 215-20; P. H. Ditchfield, The Parish Clerk (London: Methuen, 1907), available at [http://www.bookrags.com/ebooks/13363/]. [LC 2] [—Iain Rowley]

Bennet, William (b. 1802), of Glencairn, Dumfriesshire, of humble parents, apprenticed as a mechanic, contributed poems to the Dumfries Courier, became editor of the Glasgow Free Press, pub. first vol of poetry at eighteen (1820), second was Songs of Solitude, third The Chief of Glenorchy, also prose works. Ref: Wilson, II, 248-50. [S]

Bennett, Robert (b. 1855), of Linlithgow, West Lothian, son of a pattern designer, draper, wrote in the Glasgow Weekly Herald and Sunday School, pub. Poems and Prose (Glasgow, 1888). Ref: Edwards, 12, 27-32; Reilly (1994), 42. [S]

? Bennoch, Francis (1812-90), of Drumlanrig, Dumfriesshire, farmer’s son, later a prosperous London silk merchant, ‘a poet of wider reputation’ (Miller, 277); pub. three vols, The Storm, and other Poems (1849); Sir Ralph de Rayne (1872), and Poems, Lyrics, Songs and Sonnets (1877). Ref: Edwards, 6, 381 and 16, [lix]; Miller, 277-8. [S]

Bentley, Elizabeth (1767-1839), of Norwich, daughter of a journeyman cordwainer, no formal education but taught to read and write by her fatherpub. poems in the Norwich Chronicle, and these vols: Genuine Poetical Compositions on various Subjects (Norwich, 1791, BL 993.c.43(4)), An Ode on the glorious Victory over the French... (Norwich 1805? BL 10601.a.28(3)), Poems, being the genuine compositions of Elizabeth Bentley, of Norwich (Norwich, 1821, BL 11642.bb.43), Miscellaneous Poems; being the Genuine Compositions... Third Volume (Norwich, 1835). Her first vol. had 2,000 subscribers and was well reviewed in the Gentleman’s Magazine, and enabled her to open a small school. Also received support from the Royal Literary Fund. Ref: LC 3, 193-202; ODNB; Landry, 209-16; Meyenberg, 201; Kord, 259; Rizzo, 243; Johnson, items 68-70, 932; Jackson (1993), 26; Sutton, 54 (letters). [LC 3] [F]

? Bernstein, Marion (1846-1906), of Jewish-Scottish origins, lame and invalided as a child, earned an uncertain living as a music teacher in Glasgow, though at least once she was forced to seek help for indigence, might arguably be described as lower-middle class or middle class, pub. Mirren’s Musings and Other Poems (Glasgow: McGeachy, 1876); wrote remarkable comic and feminist poems for the Glasgow Weekly Mail, incl. ‘Mirren’s Autobiography,’ in tetrameter rhymed couplets. Ref: Edwards 1, 44-47; Boos (1995), 68, Leonard, 296-305; Reilly (2000), 39; Boos (2008), 337-47; inf. Florence Boos. [F] [S]