DEVON POETS

Transcripts from

West-Country Poets: their lives and works: being an account of about four hundred verse writers
of Devon and Cornwall with poems and extracts

by W. H. Kearley Wright

Provided by Sandra Windeatt (archived copy)

Book Introduction

Book Index

Transcripts of some of the biographies

This book, published in 1896, includes about 400 writers in total.  It was indexed for GENUKI by Linda Cross and I ordered it from the library.  While I had it on loan, I managed to transcribe the biographies of nearly 50 or so of the Devonshire poets.   These are listed below together with other surnames that are cited in that biography. I do not have the book any longer (it has gone back to the library) so cannot do any lookups but am, of course, very eager for any errors or omissions to be corrected or pointed out.

I have taken the liberty of typing the surnames in capital letters. Many thanks to Linda Cross for typing the original index.  I would never have found the book if it weren't for her kindness in sharing this information.

The Selection: This was entirely personal.  I typed up eight biographies of people who were connected with an incident in 1812 in which I am interested (the destruction of Childe's tombe on Dartmoor).  Then I just typed up items about people that took my fancy - especially the poets of humble origins who may not be well documented elsewhere.  The book includes biographies of some interesting Cornish poets but I am afraid I ignored them.  I typed as many as I could in the time.  I tried to be as faithful as possible to the original punctuation, etc. but  I may have made a few mistakes.  I also deviated from the original in typing the surnames of people cited in capital letters

The Poetry:  I have no literary knowledge and found most of the poetry very hard-going.  As a result, I  gave up typing some of  the poems after one verse.    But I did transcribe in full the two poems in Devonshire dialect: LETTER TA ZOGG by Henry Baird and SATAN'S VISIT TO NORTH LEW AS TOLD BY MA GRANFER. by Elias Tozer.  For those of us not lucky enough to have been born and bred in Devon, the latter has been kindly translated by Ian James.

The People: