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William Barnes.
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In 1823, at the start of what was to be a thirty-nine-year career as a schoolmaster, William Barnes was studying Latin, Greek, French, Italian, and German. "I began Persian with Lee's grammar," he wro...
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In the following essay, a lecture originally delivered by Palgrave in 1886 and published with brief editorial comments by Giles Dugdale in 1953, Palgrave offers his assessment of Barnes's diale...
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In the following essay, Sisson examines Barnes's life, his writings on language, and his poetry of rural life.
I
William Barnes came of the best blood in England, being the son of a small farme...
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In the following excerpt, Parins explores Barnes's poetic technique and surveys his love and religious poetry, as well as his folklore verse and "homely rhymes. "
Barnes as a Dial...
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In the following essay, Chedzoy studies Barnes 's Poems of Rural Life in the Dorset Dialect, recounting the subject matter, technique, and critical reception of this collection.
The culmination...
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In the following essay, Hertz analyzes the imagery and versification of Barnes's romantic lyric poems.
Despite its overwhelming lushness, a poem by William Barnes often seems strangely artifici...
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In the following essay, Levi describes Barnes's life and the enduring power of his poetry.
That Wessex which we call Hardy's Wessex is only an idea of course. There is something magical ...
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In the following excerpt, Phillips looks at the social and political views Barnes expressed in his poetry and prose writings.
Society
Ill fares the land, to hastening ills a prey,Where wealth accumul...
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In the following preface to Select Poems of William Barnes, Hardy explores the unique character of Barnes's dialect poetry.
This volume of verse [Select Poems of William Barnes] includes, to th...
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In the following essay, originally composed in 1939, Forster praises Barnes's gentle and skillful poetry.
It is surprising that William Barnes has not been more widely worshipped. Perhaps there...
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In the following excerpt, Grigson evaluates Barnes's collected works of poetry and speculates on the influence of his verse.
[William Barnes's] first book was Poetical Pieces, printed fo...
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In the following excerpt, Unwin investigates Barnes's philological writings and describes the "pastoral simplicity" of his dialect poetry.
Except as a forerunner [Josiah] Relph is...
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In the following excerpt. Levy discusses the importance of nature in Barnes's poetry.
Nature
Emerson calls the sky the daily bread of the eyes, and so it and all present nature were to Barnes. ...
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In the following foreword to The Poems of William Barnes, Jones surveys Barnes's life and work as a philologist and poet, particularly studying the nature of his dialect eclogues set in his nat...
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In the following excerpted review of The Poems of William Barnes, originally published in 1962, Larkin discusses the positive aspects of Barnes 's use of dialect in his poetry.
It is little sho...
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In the following essay, Forsyth probes Barnes's theme of the preservation of rural simplicity.
The view that a group of people hold towards their past is one of the controlling factors in thei...
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William Barnes
Critical Essay by Francis Turner Palgrave
