Full Description
Ebenezer Elliott (1781-1849) is best known in literary history as the self-styled "Corn Law Rhymer" because of his savage satirical poems published in the 1830s. But he has faded from critical view and there has never been a scholarly selection of his work, let alone a full edition of all his poetry. This selection, with a detailed introduction and explanatory notes, is intended to bring Elliott's work into the public domain, directed at both students of the period and the general reader. The range of his work is extraordinary and this selection includes extracts from early poems, from longer political poems, such as "The Village Patriarch", "The Ranter", and "The Splendid Village", as well as the "Corn Law Rhymes" themselves, and the vast number of "Miscellaneous Poems" that move from harsh satire, through celebration at the passing of the Great Reform Bill of 1832, to the many shorter pieces, often personal and elegiac, or focused on his beloved Yorkshire countryside.
