William Barnes, Notebooks. English, c. 1882

Dorsetshire Poet' (1801-86): notebooks containing: i. a list of his writings; ii. a list of articles written for the Dorset County Chronicle; iii. a list of publications in which his works had been noticed; iv. a list of his writings 'not yet published'; and v. some interesting biographical notes. The notebooks were compiled at the end of his life. In a letter to an unknown recipient, also in the collection, dated 18 Nov. 1882, Barnes hopes to send 'within a short time some such notes on my homely self and my writings as those you kindly seek'. With a photograph of Barnes, cut from a magazine: the same image forms a frontispiece to his daughter Lucy Baxter's Life of William Barnes (London, 1887). Barnes was admitted in 1838, a sizar and a 'ten-year man': 'Soon after coming back to Dorchester I put my name on the Boards of St John's College, Cambridge and, after some years, having kept my terms as best I could, I did my act and opponancies before Dr Olliphant and took my degree' (v, 35-6). He proceeded to his BD in 1851. His son William Miles matriculated 1859. Many papers of the Barnes family, including diaries, are held by the Dorset County Museum, Dorchester.