Biography

Robert Anderson (1770-1833)

Robert Anderson, known as the ‘Bard of Cumberland’ was an English labouring class poet who wrote in Cumbrian dialect.

A calico-printer by trade, Robert Anderson was a major standard bearer in Cumberland’s contribution to borderland bardic verse, celebrating the region through fierce local labouring-class pride expressed in his native tongue. In a study that aims to set Anderson in his regional and literary context, Mike Higgins stresses that Anderson wrote about Cumbrian life “not from archival research but from the inside, and from below rather than above.” Anderson was from Carlisle, a city considered from a metropolitan point of view, to be at the very margins of England; however, from a northern perspective, Carlisle was a major cultural centre for the region with a vibrant social life where wealthy families would retire to spend the winter. Anderson’s first publication, Poems on Various Subjects, published in 1798, was dedicated to Carlisle’s MP John Christian Curwen, a progressive Whig politician and enlightened agricultural improver.

Anderson was a close friend of the Cumbrian strolling player Charlotte Lowes.

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