Robert Anderson Biography

Robert Anderson (1770–1833), was an English labouring class poet from Carlisle. He was best known for his ballad-style poems in Cumbrian dialect.

Robert Anderson was born on 1 February 1770, the youngest child of nine when his parents were already old. He received his education in various places, including a charity school attached to the cathedral and then under different masters, although he was with none for very long. Having mastered the basics of reading, writing and arithmetic, he was sent to work to help support his family at the age of ten, initially under an elder brother who was a calico printer.

Having some artistic ability, he was apprenticed in 1783 to a pattern drawer and eventually went to London for five years for further training. While there he started writing - “Lucy Gray of Allendale” being the first of his compositions. This and others written that year were set to music by the composer James Hook and performed to some applause in 1794. In 1796 he returned to support his father in Carlisle and found work with a firm there. Two years later his English Poems on Various Subjects were published by subscription. Afterwards he turned to lighthearted humorous poems in dialect and the first edition of Ballads in the Cumbrian dialect was published in Carlisle in 1805. Since music was a favourite diversion of his, he composed the music to accompany many of these himself.

In 1808, following the death of his father the year before, Anderson left for another position near Belfast, calling on the way to visit the grave of one of his principal influences, Robert Burns. While there he published in the local papers and particularly a series of four “Enigmas” in the Belfast Commercial Chronicle which sparked a brief fad of imitation. Eventually he had to return to England, since the calico trade was in decline, and was welcomed back to Carlisle with a civic reception. To help relieve his poverty, a new edition of his poems, The Poetical Works of Robert Anderson, was published from the city in 1820, for which he contributed an autobiographical essay. This edition attracted over 1000 subscribers, among them the then poet laureate, Robert Southey, and his eventually successor, William Wordsworth.

Anderson’s last years were marked by intemperance and the fear of ending his days in the workhouse. But, though he died very poor, he was saved from that fate by the financial support of friends. After his death, he was buried in the grounds of Carlisle Cathedral, and a memorial was raised there with a medallion likeness and the inscription "Erected by public subscription to the memory of Robert Anderson, the Cumberland Bard, died in Carlisle, 26 Sept. 1833, aged 63 years". The centenary edition of Anderson’s Cumberland Ballads and Songs was published in 1904. His death was marked by a centenary celebration souvenir, Robert Anderson, the Cumberland Bard, in 1933.

Two late silhouette portraits of the poet are now in the Tullie House Museum and Art Gallery, as is his death mask. There is also a head and shoulders portrait of the poet attributed to John Hazlitt in which he is wearing the same neatly knotted neckcloth as in the silhouettes.