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Joseph Blacket, poet and protégé of the Milbanke’s at Seaham

(1786–1810)

Joseph Blacket, poet, was born at Tunstall, a Yorkshire village 2 miles from Catterick, the eleventh of twelve children of a day labourer employed by Sir John Lawson, bt, widely admired for his aid to the neighbouring poor. He was taught free by the village schoolmistress until seven, and then by a master until eleven.

In 1797 Blacket's brother John, a ladies' shoemaker in London, offered him work as his apprentice, and he reached the capital by wagon in ten days. He was devoted to books, and before he was fifteen had read Josephus, Eusebius's Ecclesiastical History, and Foxe's Martyrs. A visit to the theatre to see Kemble play Richard III attracted him to Shakespeare. In 1804 he married the sister of his brother's wife, but she died of consumption in 1807 leaving an infant daughter, Mary. Desolate and poor, Blacket turned for consolation to composing poetry and dramatic verse.

Blacket's first patron was his printer, William Marchant, who set up his poetry for nothing, and in the autumn of 1808 passed his manuscripts to Mr S. J. Pratt. Pratt was at once struck by Blacket's genius and drew a detailed parallel between him and Bloomfield, whose muse had been cherished by Capel Lofft. Pratt became Blacket's patron and promoted him as a literary rarity. Specimens of the Poetry of Joseph Blacket (1809) was a private edition for limited circulation to which the duchess of Leeds, and numerous other people, subscribed.

Meanwhile ill health compelled Blacket to relinquish his trade. Friends enabled him to take a sea voyage to his brother-in-law, John Dixon, gamekeeper of Sir Ralph Milbanke, at Seaham, co. Durham, in August 1809. There Milbanke, his wife, and his daughter Anne Isabella (later Lady Byron), interested themselves in him. Blacket attempted drama in a tragedy, The Earl of Devon. He died of consumption on 23 August 1810 and was buried in Seaham churchyard. A plain monument bears the concluding lines of his own poem, ‘Reflections at Midnight’, written in 1802. Gifts from friends covered funeral expenses leaving £97 10s. for the benefit of his child (Pratt, 101).

Pratt collected and published his Remains (1811) with a rather fulsome memoir based on his own acquaintance and the poet's letters to his brother, his mother, and his fellow poet Bloomfield. Byron satirized him in English Bards and Scotch Reviewers (ll. 765–70), and wrote a facetious, heartless Epitaph on the ‘shoemaker poet’.

Oxford Dictionary of Biographies

Sources

[J. Blacket], The remains of Joseph Blacket, ed. S. J. Pratt, 2 vols. (1811) · Lord Byron: the complete poetical works, ed. J. J. McGann, 2 (1980), ll. 765–70, and Epitaph for Mr Joseph Blackett, late poet and shoemaker, 338 · GM, 1st ser., 81/2 (1811), 337–41 · Monthly Review, new ser., 66 (1811), 392 · Monthly Review, new ser., 59 (1809), 100–01

Archives

Bodl. Oxf., letters, with verses, to Lady Byron

Likenesses

H. R. Cook, stipple (after print by J. J. Masquerier), BM, NPG; repro. in Remains of Joseph Blacket (1811)

Wealth at death

very poor; died with insufficient funds to cover his funeral expenses: Remains, ed. Pratt