Author: Shaw, John
Biography:
SHAW, John (fl 1824-5)
John Shaw’s common name and obscure origins make it impossible to identify him from public records but his one acknowledged publication, Woolton Green . . . with Other Miscellaneous Poems, dedicated on 1 Dec. 1824 and published in 1825, provides several clues. The title-page gives Shaw’s name and address (Throstle Nest, Walton, Liverpool) and his recent occupation as an itinerant provincial actor (“late of the Theatres Royal, York, Hull, Newcastle-upon-Tyne, etc.”). The volume is dedicated to the Foreign Secretary George Canning (1770-1827) “without permission” but with respect, as the “truest friend” of Liverpool. In an autobiographical preface, Shaw summarizes his career to date as first an uneducated ploughboy, later a sailor, then an actor. Woolton Green he says is his first published work. He promises more if Woolton Green should be successful, and hints that he is writing a play. But he does not mention two anonymously-published continuations of Byron’s Don Juan, Cantos 17 and 18, printed in Liverpool in 1824 and 1825 respectively, that are generally attributed to him. The basis for the attribution is their having been produced about the same time by the same Liverpool printer and found bound together with a copy of Woolton Green that contains a presentation inscription from Shaw to James Hargreaves. It remains possible, however, that the three works were bound together for other reasons than common authorship—as Liverpool poetry, for instance. If Hargreaves was the Baptist minister of that name (1768-1845), he might have encountered Shaw as a boy at Ogden, Lancashire, where Hargreaves served as minister and schoolmaster from 1798 to 1822 before moving to London. None of these three works was reviewed and nothing more appeared under Shaw’s name. (ancestry.com 18 Oct. 2024; findmypast.com 18 Oct. 2024; Goodridge; ODNB 18 Oct. 2024 [James Hargreaves]; Johnson Cata items 816-18) HJ