Biography

Susanna Blamire (1747-1794)

Susanna Blamire, posthumously dubbed the ‘Muse of Cumberland’ has been called “unquestionably the best female writer of her age” for her sophisticated and satirical observations of border-area life and polite society. Her work, passed on by word of mouth and converted into song continued to be sung in the Carlisle region for decades after her premature death.

Born to a gentry family in 1747 Blamire wrote neo-classical and dialect verse that provides valuable insight into late eighteenth-century regional life. The English Dialect Dictionary edited by Joseph Wright and published between 1898 and 1905 used many of Blamire’s words as examples of Cumberland dialect. A “bonny and varra lish young lass” (a beautiful and very lively young girl) who enjoyed social events or “merry neets”.

She was writing verse in dialect that combined Cumberland and low-Scots for years before Robbie Burns’ hugely influential volume Poems, Chiefly in the Scottish Dialect was published in Kilmarnock by John Wilson in 1786. However, she was not published in her lifetime and like most of the figures in Biographicon has faded into obscurity.

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