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Poems of Rural Life in the Dorset Dialect

First published: 1844
Pages: 507

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About this book

Written in the broad vowels of the Blackmore Vale rather than the polished English of London drawing rooms, these poems set down Dorset speech as William Barnes heard it spoken around him. The volume gathers all three of his Dorset collections into one book: the first arranged by season through Spring, Summer, Fall and Winter, closing with a run of sundry pieces, the later two ordered poem by poem. Alongside the lyrics sit eclogues, verse dialogues in which country people talk over allotments, enclosure, courtship and work. A list of Dorset words, with hints on local pronunciation, closes the volume. Barnes was doing something unusual for his century: treating a regional dialect as fit material for serious art rather than comedy. Two of the three collections had gone out of print by the time he gathered them here.

About the author

William Barnes

William Barnes (1801–1886) was a Dorset schoolmaster, Church of England clergyman and philologist, born in the Blackmore Vale and rector of Winterborne Came from 1862 until his death, though he kept a school at Mere in Wiltshire for a dozen years before returning to Dorchester in 1835.

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