Biographicon is a cultural psychogeography of the Northern Enlightenment
“The Goths fancied that the souls of the illustrious dead were transmuted into flame; and that tomb-fires ascended from the graves of heroes, which became stars in the firmament. Such a transmutation the eminent really undergo by the record of their lives: thenceforth, like the lamps in cities, they blaze in the eyes of men, and guide the steps of each successive passenger along the nobler paths of human life.”
Richmond Civic Society public talk (25.3.25). Declan McCormack has been invited to give a talk about Samuel Butler’s Theatre Company at the Georgian Theatre Royal in Richmond, North Yorkshire. Declan provided research material and advised on the Butler Company for the theatre’s new museum and visitor centre ’The Georgian Theatre Experience’ which won a White Rose Award upon opening. The ‘White Rose’ is the largest tourism event of its kind in the UK.
Canny Cunningham
Declan McCormack was invited by the North East Forum in Eighteenth-Century and Romantic Studies to give a paper on the Irish actor and poet John Cunningham at Newcastle University (6.12.24).
While strolling between the Tees and Tweed the actor John Cunningham wrote the greatest pastoral poems of the late-eighteenth century but who has heard of him today?
John Cunningham: Irish émigré, pastoral poet and player
Declan McCormack was invited to give a paper on the Irish poet and actor John Cunningham who made his living as a stroller in the North of England and Scotland at the Eighteenth-Century Ireland Society Annual Conference 2024 held at the University of Galway on 20-21 June 2024. The programme is available here