Author: Cunningham, John
Biography:
CUNNINGHAM, John (c. 1729-73: ODNB)
Cunningham is a prior author in that his major poems were published before 1770. However, both the 1771 edition of his Poems, Chiefly Pastoral and the posthumous Poetical Works include some previously unpublished poems. He was the younger son of a Scottish wine cooper who, coming into some money, set up a wine shop in Dublin and later went bankrupt. His mother’s surname before marriage was Fleming. Cunningham was educated at the Drogheda grammar school and published verse in Dublin newspapers. A farce, Love in a Mist (1747), was successful enough that he decided on a career in the theatre and he left Dublin for England and Scotland. In about 1761 he was an actor on the Edinburgh stage. The success of his poem Elegy on a Pile of Ruins (1761) took him to London but he soon travelled north again, first to Edinburgh and then to Newcastle. His Poems, Chiefly Pastoral (1766) established his reputation and a Newcastle friend, Thomas Slack of the Newcastle Chronicle, brought out an expanded second edition in 1771. Cunningham died of a nervous disorder on 18 Sept. 1773 and was buried in the cemetery of St. John the Baptist church, Newcastle. He is commemorated by a monument and by a window in the church. (ODNB 19 Mar. 2024; ancestry.co.uk 19 Mar. 2024) SR
Other Names:
- Cunningham