Life
1824-1889 [pseud. ‘Patricius Walker’]; b. 19 March, Ballyshannon,
Co. Donegal ‘an odd, out of the way little town, on the extreme western
verge of Europe’ (Diary); son of bank-manager at Ballyshannon,
where he entered the bank, c. 1837; ed. Ballyshannon and Killeshandra
to age of 15; early enthusiasm for Tennyson; sent poems to Leigh Hunt
before his nineteenth birthday (and later ded. his Poems, 1850,
to him), and established a literary friendship; customs officer at Donegal,
Ballyshannon, Ramsey, New Ross, Ballyshannon [again], Coleraine; conducted
a correspondence with William Carleton in 1846; had ballads printed for
sale at country fairs in the West of Ireland; published unsigned essay
on “Irish Ballad Singers and Street Singers” in Household
Words (1852); friendly correspondence with the Brownings, mooting
a period at college ‘either at the London University or one of the
new Queen’s Colleges in Ireland’; moved to London instead, 1854,
and worked in literary journalism, which he found uncongenial; returned
to Irish Customs; then at Lymington, Hampshire, 1863; retired and settled
in London, joining Fraser’s Magazine, as assistant-editor
and replacement for Froude, 1870, and becoming editor in 1872; m. Helen
Paterson, water-colourist, 22 Aug. 1874; moved to Chelsea to be near the
Carlyles, recording many details of Carlyle’s often intemperate conversation
in his diary (‘Don’t come to me to certify that you have an
intellect with such [materialist] notions on your head’); friendly
with the Rossettis, William Morris, Burne Jones, Philip Webb, and J. W.
Boyce (in whose diaries and correspondence he features); received introduction
to visit Tennyson at Twickenham from Coventry Patmore, June 1861; visited
Tennyson at different times, as recounted in his diary; wrote poems dealing
with fairies of Irish folk tradition adapted for Victorian nursery; Poems
(1850); issued Day and Night Songs (1854; 2nd series ill. pre-Raphaelite
artists); ed., The Ballad Book (1864), with an extended prefatory
account of the genre; Laurence Bloomfield in Ireland (1864), verse
novel dealing with land-relations in a manner sympathetic to the tenants,
featuring Bloomfield, a landlord, who takes charge of his estate, dismissing
his cruel bailiff and burning his list of Ribbonmen; Bloomfield halts
evictions and institutes fair dealing with the peasants but cannot prevent
the assassination of the bailiff; applauded by George Eliot, John Stuart
Mill, and Ford Madox Brown following serialisation in Fraser’s
(1862-63); moved to Whitley upon the death of Carlyle, 1881; Allingham
supplied material for Tennyson’s brogue-poem;“The Music
Master” (publ. in Irish Songs and Poems, 1887), praised by
Ralph Waldo Emerson, Aubrey de Vere, and Thackeray, in letters to Allingham;
quarrelled with Fraser and departed from editorship, 1879; his collected
works were published in 6 vols., 1888-93; also Varieties in Prose
(1893), and a selection from his Diary (1907); suffered occasional
lapses of mental health, and recuperated in Donegal; d. 18 Nov.; ashes
brought from Hampstead to Mullinashee, behind the house where he was born;
his home preserved in Ballyshannon; there is a water-colour portrait by
Helen Allingham in NGI; P. S. O’Hegarty prepared a bibliography in
1945. JMC DNB DIL RAF MKA OCEL DIW DIB DUB DIH ODQ
FDA OCIL
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Works
Contemporary Editions, Poems (London: Chapman & Hall
1850) [ded. Leigh Hunt]; Day and Night Songs (London: G. Routledge
1854) [ill. Dante Gabriel Rossetti]; Peace and War (London: G.
Routledge 1854); The Music Master (London: Routledge 1855); Day
and Night Songs (London: G. Routledge 1854) 8o., x, 155pp.; Do.,
(London: G. Philip & Son 1884), 8o.; [and] The Music-Master: A
Love Poem (London: Bell & Daldy 1860); Laurence Bloomfield
in Ireland: A Modern Poem (London: Macmillan 1864, 1869), vii, 292pp.
[first in Frazer’s Magazine as 12 instalments, 1862-63]; Do.,
[rep. edn.] (NY: AMS Press 1972); Do., [rep. edn.] (Poole: Woodstock
1999), xii, 292pp.; The Ballad Book: A Selection of the Choicest British
Ballads [Golden Treasury Series] (London: Macmillan 1864), xlvii,
393pp., [gilt title]; In Fairyland: A Series of Pictures by Richard
Doyle with a Poem by William Allingham (London: Longmans, Green 1870);
Do., (London: Macmillan 1872, 1879), 389pp.; Fifty Modern Poems
(London: Bell & Daldy 1865; [rep. edn.] (NY: AMS Press 1973) [gilt
title]; Songs, Ballads and Stories (London: George Bell & Sons
1877; [rep. edn.] (NY: AMS 1972); Evil May-Day (1883), viii, 100pp;
Ashby Manor: A Play in Two Acts, [hist. drama] (London:
David Stott 1883) [var. 1882]; Flower Pieces and Other Poems (London:
Reeves & Turner 1888), x, 194pp. [ills. by Dante Gabriel Rossetti];
Do. (London: Reeves & Turner 1890), 183pp. ill.; Blackberries:
Picked Off Many Bushes, by D. Pollex and Others; Put in a Basket by
W. Allingham (London: Philip & Son 1884), 171pp., and Do.,
(London: Longmans & 1893), 8o.; Irish Songs and Poems, with Nine
Airs Harmonised for Voice and Pianoforte (London: Reeves & Turner
1887), vi, 164pp.; Life and Phantasy (London: Reeves & Turner
1889); Varieties in Prose (London: Longmans Green 1893).
Modern Editions, W. B. Yeats, ed., Sixteen Poems (Dun Emer 1905); Helen Allingham, ed., By the Way: Verses, Fragments, and Notes (London: Longmans, Green 1912); Helen Allingham, ed., Poems of William Allingham (London: Macmillan 1912); John Hewitt, ed. and intro., The Poems of William Allingham (Dublin: Dolmen 1967), 102pp.; George Birbeck Hill, ed., Letters of Gabriel Rossetti to William Allingham 1854-1870 (London: Fisher & Unwin 1897); Helen Allingham and Dollie Radford, ed., A Diary (London: Macmillan 1907); Do., rev. edn. and intro. by Geoffrey Grigson (London: Centaur 1967); Do., revised and ed. with introduction by John Julius Norwich (Harmondsworth 1985; Folio Society 1990); Helen Allingham and E. Baumer Williams, eds., Letters to William Allingham (London: Longmans 1911).
Musical arrangements, The Fairies (London: Michael O'Mara Books 1990); The Fairies, with music by Arnold Bax (London: J. & W. Chester [1907]); The Fairies: Ballad for Mixed Voices, Solo & Orchestra, Henry Hadley [op. 3, piano-vocal score] (Huntsville: Recital Publs. 1994). See also Hugh Shields, “‘Adieu to Ballyshanny’, a musical recreation of the folk poetry of William Allingham”, RTÉ (19 Sept. 1971), and notice in RTÉ Guide ( 17 Sept. 1971), p.8.
Miscellaneous poems, “Irish Ballad Singers and Irish Street Ballads” [unsigned], Household Words, No. 94 (10 Jan. 1852), posthum. rep. in Varieties in Prose (1893), pp.137-54, and rep. in Shields, ed., Ceol III, i (1967), pp.2-20; poem in Dublin University Magazine (Feb. 1858), pp.173-74.
Bibliographies, P. S. O’Hegarty, A Bibliography of William Allingham (Dublin: Thom 1945), rep. from Dublin Magazine, Vol. 20, No. 1 (Jan.-March & July-Sept. 1945); Alan Warner, ‘William Allingham: Bibliographical Survey’, Irish Booklore Vol. 2 (1976), pp.303-07; Samira Aghacy Husni, ‘Bibliography of William Allingham’, Éire-Ireland Vol. 22, No. 1 (Spring 1987), pp.155-57; Mark Samuels Lasner, William Allingham: A Bibliographical Study (Philadelphia: Homes 1993).
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- John William Byers on William Allingham (1903);
- W. B. Yeats on William Allingham in (1904); A. P. Graves, ‘William Allingham,’ Irish Literary & Musical Studies (1913), pp.70-101;
- Thomas MacDonagh, Literature in Ireland (1915), Sect. V, p.990;
- Alan Warner, ‘The Diary of William Allingham’, The Dublin Magazine, Vol. 6, No. 2 (Summer 1967), pp.20-28;
- Seán McMahon, ‘The Boy From His Bedroom Window’, Éire-Ireland, 5, 2 (Summer 1970), pp.142-53;
- Alan Warner, William Allingham: An Introduction (Dublin: Dolmen 1971; rep. Bucknell UP 1975);
- Alan Warner, ‘Patricius Walker: Victorian Irishman on Foot’, Eire-Ireland, 8, 3 (1973), pp.70-80;
- Thomas Kinsella, ‘The Divided Mind’, in Seán Lucy, ed., Irish Poets in English (Cork: Mercier 1973), p.213;
- Hugh Shields, ‘William Allingham and Folk Song’, Hermathena, CXVII (Summer 1974), pp.23-36;
- Terence Brown, ‘William Allingham, Cultural Confusion’, Northern Voices: Poets from Northern Ireland (Dublin: Gill & Macmillan 1975), pp.42-54;
- Anthony Cronin, ‘William Allingham: The Lure of London’, in Heritage Now: Irish Literature in the English Language (Dingle: Brandon 1982), pp.61-68;
- Chris Morash, The Hungry Voice (Dublin: IAP 1989);
- Seamus Deane, gen. ed., Field Day Anthology of Irish Writing (Derry: Field Day 1991), pp. 2, 7, 8, 723;
- Mark Samuels Lasner, ‘William Allingham: Some Uncollected Authors LVI’, Book Collector, Vol. 39 (Summer 1991), pp.174-204, and Do., (Autumn 1991), pp.321-49;
- Seamus Mac Annaidh, ‘Shpayke’, The Spark, [Fermanagh/WEA] (Spring 1992);
- Robert Welch, Irish Poetry from Moore to Yeats (Gerrards Cross: Smythe 1980).
Note: W. B. Yeats’s various reviews and articles on Allingham include ‘A Poet We Have Neglected’, United Ireland (12 Dec. 1891), rep. in John Frayne, ed., Uncollected Prose, 1970, pp.208-12; and the earlier ‘William Allingham’ in Providence Sunday Journal (2 Sept. 1888), rep. in Horace Reynolds, Letters to the New Island, 1938; a sketch of Allingham in Alfred Miles ed., The Poets and Poetry of the Century (1892); ‘Modern Irish Poetry’, in Justin McCarthy, ed., Irish Literature, 1904, Vol. III, pp.vii-xiii, x-xi.
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Notes
Chris Morash, The Hungry Voice
(Dublin: IAP 1989), selects “The Poor Little Maiden” and “The
Young Street Singer”, remarking that Allingham shows a keen sympathy
with the plight of the Irish peasantry in the years following the Famine,
particularly in Lawrence Bloomfield (1864).
Seamus Deane, gen. ed., Field Day Anthology of Irish Writing (Derry: Field Day Co. 1991), Vol. 2, selects Laurence Bloomfield in Ireland [pp.61-62]; Songs, Ballads and Stories, “The Girl’s Lamentation” [61-62], “The Ruined Chapel” [p.63], ‘The Fairies’ [p.64], “The Winding Banks of Erne” [pp.64-65]. Includes remark, ‘Tennyson was his idol and he cultivated the laureate’s friendship with relentless assiduity [...] widened his acquaintances when he became editor of Fraser’s Magazine in 1872 nine years after he had settled in England.’ [p.113].
'Patricius Walker' was the pseud. of William Allingham in his walking
tours of Scotland, England, and France. See Alan Warner, ‘Patricius Walker,
Victorian Irishman on Foot,’ Éire-Ireland, Vol. 8,
No. 3 (1973), pp.70-80.
John Bowen, reviewing Jim Cooke, Charles Dickens’s Ireland: An Anthology including an Account of His Visits to Ireland (Inchicore: Woodfield Press), notes that William Allingham’s ’the Irish “Stationers” is included but not his more important article on Irish ballad singers.
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Princess Grace Irish Library (Monaco)