Podcast

09. The Cumberland Bard, with Sue Allan on Robert Anderson

About the Episode

This episode features Dr Sue Allan, an expert on Cumbria’s folk tradition, talking about one of the most significant dialect poets of Georgian Northern England, Robert Anderson from Carlisle.

A calico printer by trade, the ‘Cumberland Bard’ Robert Anderson has long been considered the standard bearer of Cumberland’s contribution to bardic verse. Anderson was a close friend of the local stroller Charlotte Lowes. Other influential figures of the ‘Cumbrian Enlightenment’ in this episode include the ‘Muse of Cumberland’ Susanna Blamire and the ‘Cumberland Minstrel’ John Stagg, best known today for publishing “The Vampyre” in 1810, the first entire poem in the British tradition on the subject.

Dr Sue Allan was awarded her PhD from Lancaster University in 2017 for her study of Cumbrian folk song and she published a biography of Robert Anderson in 2020.

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