Author: Cunningham, Allan
Biography:
CUNNINGHAM, Allan (1784-1842: ODNB)
He was born near Keir, Dumfriesshire, Scotland, on 7 Dec. 1784, one of nine children of John Cunningham and his wife Elizabeth Harley. When he was two, his father became factor to Patrick Millar of Dalswinton, near Robert Burns’s (q.v.) Ellisland farm. Cunningham attended a dame school before being apprenticed at the age of ten to an elder brother, James, who was a stonemason. He was self-educated and admired the verse of Burns, James Hogg, and Walter Scott (qq.v.); Scott became a correspondent and friend who later secured cadetships for two of Cunningham’s sons. Cunningham published poems in Eugenius Roche’s (q.v.) Literary Recreations in 1807. In 1809 he met R. H. Cromek who was to develop a reputation as a rather unscrupulous editor. Cromek initially dismissed Cunningham’s verse as imitative but he seemed taken in when they were presented as old songs and the result was Remains of Nithesdale and Galloway Song. Cromek encouraged him to move to London which Cunningham did in 1810. There he contributed verse to periodicals, worked for a sculptor, and was a parliamentary reporter. On 1 July 1811 at Saint Saviour’s in Southwark he married Jean (or Jane) Walker who had followed him from Scotland to London; they had five sons and a daughter. In 1814 he began employment as superintendent of the sculptor Francis Chantrey’s establishment; this was to cease only with Chantrey’s death in 1841. He continued to produce literary works, including tales, romances, and Lives of the Most Eminent British Painters, Sculptors, and Architects (6 vols, 1829-33). His The Work and Life of Burns (8 vols) was issued in 1834. On a return visit to Nithesdale he was presented with the freedom of Dumfries at a public dinner where Thomas Carlyle (q.v.) gave a speech in his honour. Cunningham and his family lived in Lower Belgrave Place, Pimlico, London, and he died there on 29 Oct. 1842 after suffering several strokes. He was survived by his wife who died in 1864; both were buried in the cemetery at Kensal Green. Several portraits of him are in the National Portrait Gallery in London. (ODNB 18 Mar. 2024; ancestry.co.uk 18 Mar. 2024; David Hogg, Life of Allan Cunningham [1875]) SR