Skip to main content
SpringerLink
Log in
Book cover

The Lost Romantics pp 301–325Cite as

Palgrave Macmillan

Barry Cornwall: Lost Nightingale

  • Chapter
  • First Online:

  • 219 Accesses

Abstract

In 1820, the reputation of Barry Cornwall, pseudonym of solicitor Bryan Waller Procter (1787–1874), was at its height. One of the most popular male poets of the age, Cornwall was the prolific author of Cockneyish poems that shared themes and sources with those of Keats. Unlike his less market-savvy rival, however, Cornwall was feted by public and critics alike. Today, Barry Cornwall is little read. His work has fallen out of all the major Romantic anthologies, and the poet himself is valued only for his literary reminiscences of more highly regarded writers. In the discourse of Romantic marginality, Cornwall is one of those ‘other’ Romantics. This essay’s concern is with retrieval, reclamation, and rehabilitation, with ways of seeing. I suggest that Cornwall’s relationship with his now more famous peers, particularly Keats, helps us to understand how marginalised writers are produced, and poetic canons constructed and materialised.

This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution.

Chapter
USD   29.95
Price excludes VAT (USA)
  • Available as PDF
  • Read on any device
  • Instant download
  • Own it forever
eBook
USD   59.99
Price excludes VAT (USA)
  • Available as EPUB and PDF
  • Read on any device
  • Instant download
  • Own it forever
Softcover Book
USD   79.99
Price excludes VAT (USA)
  • Compact, lightweight edition
  • Dispatched in 3 to 5 business days
  • Free shipping worldwide - see info
Hardcover Book
USD   109.99
Price excludes VAT (USA)
  • Durable hardcover edition
  • Dispatched in 3 to 5 business days
  • Free shipping worldwide - see info

Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout

Purchases are for personal use only

Learn about institutional subscriptions

Works Cited

  • [Anon.]. 1820. Keats’s Lamia, and Other Poems. Monthly Review 92: 305–10.

    Google Scholar 

  • ———. 1819. Review of Barry Cornwall’s Dramatic Scenes. Blackwood’s Edinburgh Magazine 5: 310–16.

    Google Scholar 

  • ———. 1822. The Augustan Age in England. The Album 1: 220–21.

    Google Scholar 

  • Armour, Richard Willard. 1935. Barry Cornwall: A Biography of Bryan Waller Procter. Boston: Meador.

    Google Scholar 

  • Baudry, Louis. 1827. The Living Poets of England: Specimens of the Living British Poets. 2 vols. Paris: L. Baudry.

    Google Scholar 

  • Byron, George Gordon. 1973–82. Letter to Murray, 9 November 1820. In: Byron’s Letters and Journals. Ed. Leslie A. Marchand, 7: 225. London: Murray.

    Google Scholar 

  • Cornwall, Barry [Bryan Waller Procter]. 1819. To Michael Agnolo. Annals of the Fine Arts 4: 160.

    Google Scholar 

  • ———. 1820. A Sicilian Story, with Diego de Montilla and Other Poems. London: C. & J. Ollier.

    Google Scholar 

  • ———. 1820. Marcian Colonna: An Italian Tale, with Three Dramatic Scenes and Other Poems. London: C. & J. Ollier.

    Google Scholar 

  • ———. 1832. English Songs, and Other Small Poems. London: Moxon.

    Google Scholar 

  • Cornwall, Barry [?]. 1828. Recollections of Books and Their Authors—No. 6. John Keats, The Poet. In: The Olio 1: 391–94, at 392.

    Google Scholar 

  • Estrange, A. G. 1870. Life of Mary Russell Mitford. London: Bentley.

    Google Scholar 

  • Galignani, A. and W. 1829. The Poetical Works of Milman, Bowles, Wilson, and Barry Cornwall. Paris: A. and W. Galignani.

    Google Scholar 

  • Howitt, William. 1847. Homes and Haunts of the Most Eminent English Poets, 2 vols. London: Bentley.

    Google Scholar 

  • Jackson, Heather. 2015. Those Who Write for Immortality: Romantic Reputations and the Dream of Lasting Fame. New Haven: Yale University Press.

    Book  Google Scholar 

  • Jackson, Rossiter. 1872. Little Classics: Minor Poems. Boston: Houghton, Mifflin and Company.

    Google Scholar 

  • Jones, Jonathan. 2018. Jack Vettriano: Just the Tom Jones of 21st Century Art? The Guardian, 19 September 2013. https://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/jonathanjonesblog/2013/sep/19/jack-vettriano-tom-jones-art. Accessed 19 December 2018.

  • ———. 2018. Why Are So Many People Moved by This Wedding Photograph? The Guardian, 1 October 2015. https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2015/oct/01/sydney-wedding-photograph. Accessed 19 December 2018.

  • Keats, John. 1958. The Letters of John Keats, 1814–1821. Ed. Hyder Edward Rollins, 2 vols. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • ———. 1977. The Complete Poems. Ed. John Barnard. Harmondsworth: Penguin.

    Google Scholar 

  • Kendrick, Asahel. 1871. My Poetical Favourites: A Selection from the Best Minor Poems of the English Language. New York: Sheldon.

    Google Scholar 

  • Kimberly, Caroline. 2004–05. Effeminacy, Masculinity, and Homosocial Bonds: The (Un)Intentional Queering of John Keats. In: Romanticism on the Net, 36–37. https://doi.org/10.7202/011142ar.

  • Kramer Linkin, Harriet, and Stephen C. Behrendt (eds.). 1999. Romanticism and Women Poets: Opening the Doors of Reception. Lexington: University Press of Kentucky.

    Google Scholar 

  • Lake, J. W. 1828. The British Poets of the Nineteenth Century. Frankfurt A/M: H. L. Broenner.

    Google Scholar 

  • Latané, David E. 2013. William Maginn and the British Press: A Critical Biography. London: Routledge.

    Google Scholar 

  • Leary, Patrick. 1994. Fraser’s Magazine and the Literary Life, 1830–1847. Victorian Periodicals Review 27: 105–26.

    Google Scholar 

  • L.E.L. [Laetitia Elizabeth Landon]. 1831. Romance and Reality, 3 vols. London: Colburn and Bentley.

    Google Scholar 

  • Maginn, William. 1823. Odoherty, Proem. Blackwood’s Edinburgh Magazine, pp. 689–93.

    Google Scholar 

  • Marggraf Turley, Richard. 2009. Bright Stars: John Keats, Barry Cornwall and London Literary Culture. Liverpool: Liverpool University Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Mole, Tom. 2007. Byron’s Romantic Celebrity: Industrial Culture and the Hermeneutics of Intimacy. London: Palgrave Macmillan.

    Book  Google Scholar 

  • Monckton Milnes, Richard. 1848. Life, Letters and Literary Remains of John Keats, 2 vols. London: Moxon.

    Google Scholar 

  • Pierpont, John. 1828. Thoughts Selected from the Ancient and Modern Poets. Boston: Hillard, Gray, Little and Wilkins.

    Google Scholar 

  • Stephenson, John, and James Churchill. 1831. Medical Botany; or, Illustrations and Descriptions of the Medicinal Plants, 4 vols. London: John Churchill.

    Google Scholar 

  • Vettriano, Jack. 2017. Official Website. https://www.jackvettriano.com. Accessed 6 March 2019.

  • Wilson, John. 1819. Literary Pocket-Book. Blackwood’s Edinburgh Magazine 6: 237–40.

    Google Scholar 

  • Wolfson, Susan (ed.). 2001. The Cambridge Companion to Keats. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Yorke, Oliver [William Maginn.]. 1835. The Fraserians. Fraser’s Magazine 11: 1–27.

    Google Scholar 

  • Zhang, Sarah. 2015. The Pitfalls of Using Google Ngram to Study Language. Wired https://www.wired.com/2015/10/pitfalls-of-studying-language-with-google-ngram/. Accessed 19 December 2018.

Download references

Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Aberystwyth University, Aberystwyth, Wales, UK

    Richard Marggraf Turley

Authors
  1. Richard Marggraf Turley
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

Corresponding author

Correspondence to Richard Marggraf Turley .

Editor information

Editors and Affiliations

  1. University of Vechta, Vechta, Germany

    Norbert Lennartz

Rights and permissions

Reprints and permissions

Copyright information

© 2020 The Author(s)

About this chapter

Check for updates. Verify currency and authenticity via CrossMark

Cite this chapter

Marggraf Turley, R. (2020). Barry Cornwall: Lost Nightingale. In: Lennartz, N. (eds) The Lost Romantics. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-35546-3_17

Download citation

Publish with us

Policies and ethics

Search

Navigation