Remains of Joseph Blacket, The (2 volumes) “The Shoemaker Poet”

Very SCARCE. On 16 May 1811, while in Malta, Lord Byron wrote the following epitaph for Joseph Blackett, (1785-1810) “late poet and shoemaker”:STRANGER! behold, interr’d together,The souls of learning and of leather. Poor Joe is gone, but left his all:You’ll find his relics in a stall.His works were neat, and often foundWell stitch’d, and with morocco bound. Tread lightly – where the bard is laid He cannot mend the shoe he made;Yet is he happy in his hole,With verse immortal as his sole. But still to business he held fast,And stuck to Phobus to the last.Then who shall say so good a fellowWas only `leather and prunella*?’For character – he did not lack itAnd if he did, ’twere shame to `Black it. Byron apparently had a club foot, so it is tempting to suppose that Joseph must have been a pretty good shoemaker. He spent his early days in London, learning the technique of ladies’ shoemaking from his brother John, and began writing verse after the death of his wife in 1807. Some of his letters to Lady Byron, with verses, are held in the Bodleian Library at Oxford University. Lady Byron’s family, the Milbankes, had been patrons of Joseph, and his published work, “Remains”, was dedicated to “Her Grace the Duchess of Leeds, Lady Milbanke and Family, Benevolent Patrons of the Author.” Byron seems, however, not to have been impressed with Joseph’s poetry, and after Joseph’s death described him as “the laughing stock of purgatory”. Lady Milbanke’s daughter, whom Byron was later to marry, took Joseph under her wing. In 1809 she stated that Joseph’s poems “display a superior genius and an enlarged mind”. Moreover, Joseph could count Princes and Princesses amongst his patrons, as well as a number of other members of the nobility, quite an achievement for someone who was one of twelve children of a day labourer. However, as the Monthly chronicle of North-country lore and legend reported in 1891: “Poor Blackett’s fame was only a November sun; he still felt the shivers while he stood in the shine. He does not appear to have unduly neglected his trade, but he never emerged from a poverty which was soon aggravated by ill health.” He printed his “Specimens” in 1811 to help to pay off the arrears of maintenance of his infant child and “extricate himself from embarrassment occasioned by the very long sickness, death and burial” of his wife.Byron’s low opinion of Joseph Blackett’s work was not expressed only by the poem written in Malta and on 28 June 1811, on board ship for England he wrote to his relative and literary agent, R. C. Dallas: “Yours and Pratt’s protégé, Blackett, the cobbler, is dead, in spite of his rhymes, and is probably one of the instances where death has saved a man from damnation. You were the ruin of that poor fellow amongst you: had it not been for his patrons, he might now have been in very good plight, shoe- (not verse-) making: but you have made him immortal with a vengeance. I write this, supposing poetry, patronage, and strong waters to have been the death of him.”Joseph, who spelled his name “Blacket”, was born in Tunstall, Yorkshire in 1785 (some sources say 1786). For much of his short life he did not enjoy good health. He died at Seaham in County Durham in 1810, and is buried in the churchyard of St. Mary’s, Seaham. Examples of his poems, together with correspondence, etc. can be found at The remains of Joseph Blacket.