Skip to main content

Author: Nicholson, Thomas

Biography:

NICHOLSON, Thomas (fl 1828)

Internal evidence provides some clues to the identity of the author of Visions of the Muse, which appears to have been his only published work. It is dated from Hunslet, Leeds, Yorkshire, and published in Leeds. The preface makes the usual plea for clemency from critics; no reviews have been found. Many of the poems refer to local sites, such as the “Lamentation of the River Aire” which graphically describes its pollution. Some were inspired by events within the family, notably the elegy on the death of his mother in 1824. And many of them allude to or explicitly imitate the poets he admired: Chaucer, Shakespeare, Milton, and the more contemporary Burns, Wolcot, and Byron (qq.v.). There is at least one quotation in French. Thomas Nicholson was most probably the child baptised at Hunslet on 20 Apr. 1806, the eldest of at least three children of Rachel (Brown) and Robert Nicholson, who were married in Leeds on 3 Sept. 1805. Rachel Nicholson of Hunslet was buried in Leeds on 9 Sept. 1824, aged 44. It is possible that her son died young and was buried at St. Peter’s, Leeds, on 11 June 1830. Or he might have left Yorkshire. If he lived on and stayed in Hunslet he might be one of the men of that name who were included in the census returns of 1841, 1851, and 1861, but that seems unlikely since all of them had manual occupations as machine makers, shoemakers, and makers of “tenter cloth.” (ancestry.com 2 Mar. 2024; findmypast.com 2 Mar. 2024)

 

Books written (1):