Author: Shaw, Cuthbert
Biography:
SHAW, Cuthbert (1737-71: ODNB)
Shaw is a “prior” author who owes his place in this bibliography to one final elegy and to the inclusion of one or more of his earlier poems in anthologies alongside newer ones by other writers. A work published after his death which is included in this bibliography, Poems on Different Occasions (1776), is sometimes erroneously attributed to him. He was born at Ravensworth, near Richmond, Yorkshire, and baptised nearby at Easby on 12 July 1737, the son of a shoemaker, Cuthbert Shaw, and his wife Ann(e) Neeson. He was educated locally and was first employed as an usher at schools in Scorton and Darlington. Between 1758 and 1762 he lived as an itinerant actor, with a final appearance at Covent Garden, London. He began publishing poems, sometimes under pseudonyms, among them Liberty (1756), Odes on the Four Seasons (1760) by “W. Seymour,” and The Race (1765) by “Mercurius Spur” with notes by “Faustinus Scriblerus.” Thereafter he settled in London and eked out a living by writing and some tutoring. On 5 Nov. 1765 he married Ann Rivers at St. Marylebone, London—it is said, against the wishes of her family. Her death inspired his most successful poem, the Monody to the Memory of a Young Lady who Died in Child-bed. By an Afflicted Husband (1768), to the third edition of which in 1770 he added a shorter poem, “An Evening Address to a Nightingale,” commemorating the death of their young daughter. His last elegy, on the death of the chancellor Charles Yorke (1722-70) may have been commissioned by the family. Shaw had meanwhile been living from hand to mouth, in poor health, depending in part on income derived from patent medicines in which he had a share. He died at his house in Titchfield Street, London, on 1 Sept. 1771 and was buried at St. Mary’s Paddington Green. (ODNB 17 Oct. 2024; “Life of Shaw” in Works of the British Poets [1795] 11: 557-60; ancestry.com 17 Oct. 2024; findmypast.com 17 Oct. 2024; Newsam 72-4) HJ