Abstract
Liverpool labouring-class writer Edward Rushton has been the subject of recent recovering and re-evaluation, marked by the publication of the first modern edition of his writings and an increasing number of critical studies. Rushton’s case poses especially complex questions, which are inherent in the recognition of labouring-class poetry as a major field of study within the expanding agenda of the ‘lost Romantics’. Unsurprisingly, his exquisitely 1790s radical libertarian revolutionary antislavery stance was domesticated in Victorian anthologies, aptly drawing Sketches of Obscure Poets, as that of a ‘Worthy of the Working Classes’. This paper investigates some of the still unexplored connections that intervened in shaping Rushton’s rebellious labouring-class poetics, and interrogates the reasons for his neglect during the Victorian age, at a time in which Robert Southey’s 1831 influential essay positioned ‘uneducated poets’ within British literary tradition.
This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.
Access this chapter
Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout
Purchases are for personal use only
Works Cited
Anon. 1833. Sketches of Obscure Poets, With Specimens of Their Writings. London: Cochrane & McCrow.
Atkinson, Juliette. 2010. Victorian Biography Reconsidered. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Baines, Paul. 2014. Introduction. In: The Collected Writings of Edward Rushton. Ed. P. Baines, 1–24. Liverpool: Liverpool University Press.
_____. 2016. Why Was Rushton Forgotten? In: Unsung. Eds. John Graham Davies and James Quinn. Dir. Chuck Mike. Presented by DaDaFest and Turf Love. Supported by Arts Council England: 32.
Bergel, Giles, Alexandra Franklin, Mike Bennett, and Monica Messaggi Kaya, eds. Broadside Ballads Online. Bodleian Libraries. http://ballads.bodleian.ox.ac.uk. Accessed 8 January 2019.
Binfield, Kevin, and William J. Christmas, eds. 2018. Teaching Laboring-Class British Literature of the Eighteenth and Nineteenth Centuries. New York: MLA Teaching Series.
Burk, John Daly. 1799. History of the Late War in Ireland, with an Account of the United Irish Association from the First Meeting in Belfast, to the Landing of the French at Kilala. Philadelphia: Francis and Robert Bailey.
Childers, J. S. 1925. Introduction. In: The Lives and Works of the Uneducated Poets, by Robert Southey. Ed. J. S. Childers, vii–xv. London: Humphrey Milford.
Christmas, William J. 2001. The Lab’ring Muses: Work, Writing, and the Social Order in English Plebeian Poetry, 1730–1830. Newark: University of Delaware Press.
Cooke, Michael G. 1991. Marginality: Stickball, Narcissus, and the Demands of Faith. In: The Hospitable Canon: Essays on Literary Play, Scholarly Choice, and Popular Pressures. Eds. Virgil Nemoianu and Robert Royal, 53–66. Philadelphia and Amsterdam: John Benjamins.
Cox, Jeffrey N. 2008. The Living Pantheon of Poets in 1820: Pantheon or Canon? In: The Cambridge Companion to British Romantic Poetry. Eds. Maureen McLane and James Chandler, 10–34. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Crawford, Cole. 2017. Transforming Working Class Writers and Writing: Digital Editions, Projects, and Analyses. In: A History of British Working Class Literature. Eds. John Goodridge and Bridget Keegan, 398–412. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Dellarosa, Franca. 2014. Talking Revolution: Edward Rushton’s Rebellious Poetics, 1782–1814. Liverpool: Liverpool University Press.
_____. 2015. ‘Ever Plain is the Mantle, the Hues Ever Deep.’ Edward Rushton: Poetics and Politics. La Questione Romantica, 7: 25–43.
_____. 2017. ‘Behold in these Coromantees/The fate of an agoniz’d world’: Edward Rushton’s Transnational Radicalism. In: A History of British Working Class Literature. Eds. John Goodridge and Bridget Keegan, 116–29. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Goodridge, John, gen. ed. 2003. Eighteenth-Century English Labouring-Class Poets, 1700–1800, 3 vols. London: Pickering and Chatto.
_____. 2006. Nineteenth-Century English Labouring-Class Poets, 1800–1900, 3 vols. London: Pickering and Chatto.
_____. 2010. Labouring Class Poetry. In: Teaching Romanticism. Eds. David Higgins and Sharon Rushton, 11–23. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan.
_____. 2016. Introductory Remarks. ESSE Round Table on Romantic-era Labouring-Class Poetry, Galway, July 2016. Unpublished Typescript.
_____. 2019. A Catalogue of Labouring-Class Poets and Self-Taught Poets and Poetry (1700–1900). https://www.academia.edu/23444877/A_Catalogue_of_British_and_Irish_Labouring-class_Poets_1700-1900. Accessed 20 December 2019.
Goodridge, John, and Bridget Keegan. 2017. Introduction. In: A History of British Working Class Literature. Eds. John Goodridge and Bridget Keegan, 1–9. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Hart, James P. 1839. Mary Le More; or, the Irish Maniac: An Original Domestic Drama in Three Acts. London: James Pattie.
Heinzelman, Kurt. 1994. The Uneducated Imagination: Romantic Representations of Labor. In: At the Limits of Romanticism: Essays in Cultural, Feminist, and Materialist Criticism. Eds. Mary A. Favret and Nicola J. Watson, 101–24. Bloomington and Indianapolis: Indiana University Press.
Higgins, David, and Sharon Rushton, eds. 2010. Teaching Romanticism. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan.
Landry, Donna. 2017. Foreword. In: A History of British Working Class Literature. Eds. John Goodridge and Bridget Keegan, xvii–xxii. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Mahoney, Charles W. 2003. Romantics and Renegades: The Poetics of Political Reaction. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan.
Maidment, Brian. 2017. Afterword. In: A History of British Working Class Literature. Eds. John Goodridge and Bridget Keegan, 413–18. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Noble, Andrew. 2012. The Languages of Resistance: National Particularities, Universal Aspiration. In: United Islands? The Languages of Resistance. Eds. John Kirk, Andrew Noble, and Michael Brown, 1–33. London: Pickering & Chatto.
Palmer, Roy. 1988. The Sound of History: Songs and Social Comment. London: Pimlico.
Rushton, Edward. 1814. Biographical Sketch of Edward Rushton, Written by his Son. Belfast Monthly Magazine 13 (77, December): 474–85.
———. 2014. The Collected Writings of Edward Rushton. Ed. Paul Baines. Liverpool: Liverpool University Press.
Rushton, William Lowes. 1903. Letters of a Templar 1820–1850, Selected and Arranged by William Lowes Rushton of Gray’s Inn, Barrister at Law. London: Simpkin, Marshall & Co. Ltd.; Liverpool: Edward Howell.
Scrivener, Michael. 2011. Laboring-Class Poetry in the Romantic Era. In: A Companion to Romantic Poetry. Ed. Charles Mahoney, 234–50. Chichester: Wiley-Blackwell.
Shepherd, William. 1824. Life of Edward Rushton. In: Poems and Other Writings by the Late Edward Rushton. Ed. William Shepherd, v–xxviii. London: Effingham Wilson.
Southey, Robert. 1831. Attempts in Verse, by John Jones, an Old Servant: With Some Account of the Writer, Written by Himself: And an Introductory Essay on the Lives and Works of Our Uneducated Poets, by Robert Southey, Esq. Poet Laureate. London: John Murray.
_____. 1836. Lives of Uneducated Poets, to Which Are Added Attempts in Verse, by John Jones, An Old Servant. By Robert Southey, Esq. Poet Laureate. London: H. G. Bohn.
_____. 1925. The Lives and Works of the Uneducated Poets, by Robert Southey. Ed. J. S. Childers. London: Humphrey Milford.
Thuente, Mary Helen. 2006. The Origin and Significance of the Angel Harp. In: Back to the Present: Forward to the Past: Irish Writing and History Since 1798. Eds. Patricia A. Lynch, Joachim Fischer, and Brian Coates, 181–208. Amsterdam and New York: Rodopi.
Trouillot, Michel-Rolph. 1995. Silencing the Past: Power and the Production of History. Boston: Beacon Press.
Yearsley, Ann. 2014. The Collected Works of Ann Yearsley. Eds. Kerri Andrews, Tim Fulford, and Bridget Keegan. London: Pickering & Chatto.
Youngquist, Paul. 2018. Black Romanticism: A Manifesto. Studies in Romanticism 56: 3–14.
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Corresponding author
Editor information
Editors and Affiliations
Rights and permissions
Copyright information
© 2020 The Author(s)
About this chapter
Cite this chapter
Dellarosa, F. (2020). Towards a Labouring-Class Poetics: Recovering Edward Rushton. In: Lennartz, N. (eds) The Lost Romantics. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-35546-3_6
Download citation
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-35546-3_6
Published:
Publisher Name: Palgrave Macmillan, Cham
Print ISBN: 978-3-030-35545-6
Online ISBN: 978-3-030-35546-3
eBook Packages: Literature, Cultural and Media StudiesLiterature, Cultural and Media Studies (R0)