William Allingham
William Allingham | |
---|---|
Born | |
Died | 18 November 1889 Hampstead, London | (aged 65)
Nationality | Irish[1] |
Occupation(s) | poet, scholar |
Spouse |
William Allingham (19 March 1824 – 18 November 1889) was an
Biography
William Allingham was born on 19 March 1824 in Ballyshannon, a small town in the south of County Donegal in Ulster in the north of Ireland, which is now in the Republic of Ireland. He was the son of William Allingham, the manager of a local bank who was of English descent.[4] His younger brothers and sisters were Catherine (born 1826), John (born 1827), Jane (born 1829), Edward (born 1831, and lived only a few months) and a still-born brother (born 1833). During his childhood his parents moved twice within the town, where the boy enjoyed the country sights and gardens, learned to paint and listened to his mother's piano-playing. When he was nine, his mother died.[5]
He was educated at the
In April 1870 Allingham retired from the customs service, moved to London and became sub-editor of
John George Adair was known for the evictions of forty-seven families in Derryveagh, County Donegal, Ireland, in 1861. Overnight, 244 men, women and children were evicted from their homes and left to wander the roads seeking shelter. This terrible event earned him the title "Black Jack Adair".[8] It triggered William Allingham to write the poem The Eviction.[9][10][11]
In 1888, because of Allingham's declining health, they moved back to the capital, to the heights of Hampstead village. But on 18 November 1889, he died at Hampstead. According to his wishes he was cremated. His ashes are interred at St. Anne's church in his native Ballyshannon.
Posthumously, Allingham's Varieties in Prose were published in 1893. William Allingham. A Diary, edited by Helen Allingham and Dollie Radford, was published in 1907. It contains Allingham's reminiscences of
Assessment and influence
Working on an un-ostentatious scale, Allingham produced much lyrical and descriptive poetry, and the best of his pieces are thoroughly national in spirit and local colouring.[7] His verse is clear, fresh, and graceful. His best-known poem remains his early work, "The Faeries".[12]
Allingham had a substantial influence on W. B. Yeats;[4] while the Ulster poet John Hewitt felt Allingham's impact keenly, and attempted to revive his reputation by editing, and writing an introduction to, The Poems of William Allingham (Oxford University Press & Dolmen Press, 1967). Allingham's wide-ranging anthology of poetry, Nightingale Valley (1862) was the inspiration for the 1923 collection Come Hither by Walter de la Mare.[13]
Later influences
The Allingham Arms Hotel in Bundoran, County Donegal is named after him.[14]
We daren't go a-hunting / For fear of little men […] was quoted by the character of The Tinker near the beginning of the movie
Up the Airy Mountain is the title of a short story by Debra Doyle and James D. Macdonald; while the working title of Terry Pratchett's The Wee Free Men was "For Fear of Little Men".
See also
Bibliography
- William Allingham; Helen Allingham and Dollie Radford (eds.): William Allingham. A Diary (London: Macmillan, 1907).
- William Allingham; Helen Allingham and Dollie Radford (eds.): The Diaries (London: The Folio Society, 1990; reprinted 2007).
- H. Allingham (ed.): Letters to William Allingham (London: Longmans, Green & Co., 1911).
- J. Lyle Donaghy: "William Allingham", in: Dublin Magazine 20:2 (1945), p. 34–38.
- Patricia Mary England: The Poetry of William Allingham [M.A. thesis, Birmingham University] (1976).
- George Birkbeck Hill (ed.): The Letters of Dante Gabriel Rossetti to William Allingham, 1854–1870 (London: T. Fisher Unwin, 1897).
- Samira Aghacy Husni: William Allingham. An Annotated Bibliography (Beirut: Lebanese Establishment for Publishing & Printing Services, 1989).
- Hans Knopf: William Allingham und seine Dichtung im Lichte der irischen Freiheitsbewegung (Bern, 1928).
- Mark Samuels Lasner: "William Allingham. Some Uncollected Authors LVI, Part 1 (2)", in: Book Collector 39 (Summer–Autumn 1991), p. 174–204 and 321–349.
- Malcolm McClure: "Biographical Note: The Allinghams of Ballyshannon", in: Donegal Annual 52 (2000), p. 87–89.
- William Irwin Patrick McDonough: The Life and Work of William Allingham [PhD thesis, Trinity College, Dublin] (1952).
- Hugh Shields: "William Allingham and Folk Song", in: Hermathena 117 (1974), p. 23–36.
- Patrick S. O'Hegarty: "A Bibliography of William Allingham", in: Dublin Magazine (January–March and July–September 1945).
- Alan Warner: William Allingham. An Introduction (1971).
- A. Warner: William Allingham (1975).
- A. Warner: "William Allingham. Bibliographical Survey", in: Irish Book Lore 2 (1976), p. 303–307.
References
- ^ Ireland was within the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland during his lifespan.
- ^ William Allingham. A Diary; edited by H. Allingham and D. Radford (1907 and reprints).
- ^ a b I. Ousby (ed.): The Cambridge Guide to Literature in English (1995), p. 18.
- ^ a b D. Daiches (ed.): The Penguin Companion to Literature 1 (1971), p. 19.
- ^ H. Allingham and D. Radford (eds.): William Allingham. A Diary (1907).
- ^ Robb, John (1913). The Book of the Royal Belfast Academical Institution. Belfast: McCaw, Stevenson & Orr. p. 170.
- ^ a b c d public domain: Chisholm, Hugh, ed. (1911). "Allingham, William". Encyclopædia Britannica. Vol. 1 (11th ed.). Cambridge University Press. p. 696. One or more of the preceding sentences incorporates text from a publication now in the
- ^ "Derryveagh Evictions – 'Black Jack Adair". Ireland Calling. Retrieved 27 December 2020.
- ^ "The Eviction Poem by William Allingham". internetpoem.com.
- ^ "Part 19 of Poems by William Allingham". celt.ucc.ie.
- ^ "John George Adair". irishevents4u.com. Retrieved 27 December 2020.
- ^ The Fairies, multimedia eBook.
- ^ T. Whistler: Imagination of the Heart (1993), p. 322.
- ^ "Allingham Arms Hotel | Bundoran". Allinghamarmshotel.ie. 21 November 2013. Retrieved 1 April 2014.
External links
- "Archival material relating to William Allingham". UK National Archives.
- Works by William Allingham at Project Gutenberg
- Works by or about William Allingham at Internet Archive
- Works by William Allingham at LibriVox (public domain audiobooks)
- William Allingham at University of Toronto Libraries
- William Allingham at Library of Congress, with 41 library catalogue records