Author: Cheetham, Robert Farren
Biography:
CHEETHAM, Robert Farren (1777-1801: findmypast.co.uk)
He was baptised at St. Mary, Stockport, on 28 May 1777, the only son of Jonathan Cheetham, a flour merchant, and his wife Molly Bolton, who had married the previous year. He was educated at Manchester Grammar School and Brasenose, Oxford, (BA 1800). He published as Mathetes (follower, disciple) Poems (Manchester 1795) which were reprinted in his expanded collection, Odes and Miscellanies (Stockport 1796). He also published a smaller collection, Poems (Stockport 1798). He was evidently thought of highly enough to be published alongside the more established names of George Dyer, Mary Robinson, and Anna Laetitia Barbauld (qq.v.) in Odes (Manchester 1797). Several poems appeared in GM, most notably addressed to Anna Seward (Sept. 1795, 774-75; Mar. 1802, 252). He also wrote a letter to the Anti-Jacobin Review (Nov. 1798, 537-9). Southey was reading him in 1798 and was probably the author of the review of Odes and Miscellanies in CR Jan. 1798, 84-6. He would have been an obvious candidate for Southey’s Specimens of the Later English Poets (1807) but his early fame appears to have been short-lived. He died on 13 Jan. 1801 and was buried three days later at St. Mary’s, Stockport. (findmypast.co.uk 20 Jan. 2021; ancestry.co.uk 20 Jan. 2021; Alumni Oxonienses; Cheshire Notes and Queries [1888] 6; Chester Courant 27 Jan. 1801; GM Jan. 1801, 92) AA