I lived from 1808-1866.
I was from England, and am in the English category.
I influenced poet George Hull.
John Critchley Prince (1808-1866) was well known in his prime for his strong dialect verse of the Lancashire cotton working area.
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John Critchley Prince was born in Wigan in 1808 but moved to live in Hyde after marrying a girl from there. Prince had little formal education apart from that gained from the local Baptist Sunday School.
Like may youngsters in that area at that time he found work in a local cotton mill by the age of nine.
He married young and was the father of three children by the age of 21. However, employment prospects were tenuous at best and by 1830 he was unemployed and was forced to leave the area to seek work elsewhere. Unfortunately conditions were no better elsewhere and he returned home in 1831, destitute and virtually starving.
When he did return he found that his wife and children were in a Wigan poor house. Prince moved around Lancashire following any casual work opportunity that presented itself - in Blackburn, Ashton and Hyde. Despite these troubled times, he continued to write poems in the Lancashire dialect, including "Hours With the Muses" in 1840, "Dreams and Realities" in 1847, "The Poetic Rosary" in 1850, "Autumn Leaves" in 1856 and "Miscellaneous Poems" in 1861.
John Critchley Prince died in Hyde in 1866.
JS
Links of interest include
http://www.gerald-massey.org.uk/prince/index.htm
My poetry
Hear me! ye firm and uncorrupted few,
Followers of freedom! and of virtue too!
145 lines
“Maiden, as bright as the Hunter's star,
When it shines in its cloudless home afar;
38 lines
Pure and unstained, I live in Cowper's lore;
On heavenward pinions I with Milton soar;
5 lines
How grandly solemn is this arch of night,
How wonderfully beautiful and vast,
13 lines
Stern Winter! stormy, sullen, cold, and dun,
Thou joyless outcast from the genial sun,
149 lines
The wild rose, mingled with the fragrant bine,
Is calmly graceful, beautiful to me,
23 lines
Fair town of toil, whose enterprise and power
Expand and strengthen every day and hour,
78 lines
Heywood, to thee, friend I have not yet seen,
I dedicate these lastlings of my muse,
13 lines
There is no nobler labour for mankind
Than to instruct and elevate the mind,
81 lines
Dear wife, we struggle in a time
Saddened by many a shade,
7 lines
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