Biographicon

By: Dr Declan McCormack
  • Summary

  • "By separating into one biographicon this peculiar class of lives, a philanthropic emulation would be excited, a debt of social gratitude would be discharged, a trophy to patriotism would be erected, and an instructive knowledge of the present state of nations and the gradual concatenation of intercourse would be diffused. Literature should rear altars to the missionaries of human civilization." - [William Taylor of Norwich] The Monthly Review: or Literary Journal, 74 (1814).
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Episodes
  • The Cumberland Bard, with Sue Allan
    Dec 1 2024
    This episode features Dr Sue Allan, an expert on Cumbria’s folk tradition, talking about one of the most significant dialect poets of Georgian Northern England, Robert Anderson from Carlisle. A calico printer by trade, the 'Cumberland Bard' Robert Anderson has long been considered the standard bearer of Cumberland's contribution to bardic verse. Anderson was a close friend of the local stroller Charlotte Lowes. Other influential figures of the 'Cumbrian Enlightenment' in this episode include the 'Muse of Cumberland' Susanna Blamire and the 'Cumberland Minstrel' John Stagg, best known today for publishing "The Vampyre" in 1810, the first entire poem in the British tradition on the subject. Dr Sue Allan was awarded her PhD from Lancaster University in 2017 for her study of Cumbrian folk song and she published a biography of Robert Anderson in 2020.
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    49 mins
  • Preach It! Rachel Hammersley on James Murray
    Mar 21 2024
    A major influence on the radical Thomas Spence, James Murray was a preacher who used the pulpit and print to promote new ideas. As well as publishing works on religious subjects, Murray was also a grammarian whose book The Rudiments of the English Tongue was published in Newcastle-upon-Tyne in about 1771. In this episode Rachel Hammersley joins me in Newcastle’s Lit and Phil to discuss Murray’s influence in the region at a critical moment in its political and cultural development. Rachel Hammersley is Professor of Intellectual History at Newcastle University (UK).
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    49 mins
  • William Newton and the North’s Rural Renaissance, with Richard Pears
    Feb 12 2024
    Richard Pears and I discuss William Newton, arguably northern England's first home-grown architect who was responsible for Newcastle’s Assembly Rooms and Charlotte Square the town’s first fashionable garden square. Richard’s work examines the emergence of the professional provincial architect and his remarkable local archive work has allowed him to supplant the standard ‘urban renaissance’ understanding of eighteenth-century studies with his own powerful argument for a northern ‘rural renaissance’. Dr Richard Pears is the Faculty Librarian for Arts and Humanities at Durham University.
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    41 mins

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