Author: Storey, Robert
Biography:
STOREY, Robert (1795-1860: ODNB)
A provincial poet who developed a good reputation in the north of England, the landscape and history of which were his usual subjects, Robert Storey or Story was the son of a Northumberland peasant, Robert (Robin) Storey, and his Scottish wife Mary Hoolistan. He was born at Wark on 17 Oct. 1795 and baptised probably on 27 Oct. He worked as an agricultural labourer from the age of 12 but had enough schooling at Wark and elsewhere to be able to educate himself and eventually to become a schoolmaster. In the preface to his late Poetical Works (1857), he claimed that all he learnt from formal schooling was “to read badly, to write worse, and to cipher a little farther perhaps than the Rule of Three.” His first publications were contributions to periodicals such as the Newcastle Magazine; his earliest verse collections, listed here, were followed at regular intervals by other works, notable examples being his historical play The Outlaw (1839), an autobiography entitled Love and Literature (1842), and Songs and Lyrical Poems (1845). He opened his own school at Gargrave, Yorkshire, in 1820. There he married Ellen Ellison on 17 May 1823; they had ten children baptised at Gargrave. Storey’s conservative opposition to reform, publicly displayed in some campaign songs, was at odds with the views of the families of some of his pupils, however, and after 1830 he struggled to earn a living. His friends intervened and found him a position as a clerk in the Audit Office in London in 1843, but after the family made the move four of the children died. Storey’s literary work won international recognition: in 1854 in Paris he was presented to Napoleon III as a successor to Burns, and in 1857 the Duke of Northumberland paid for the handsomely printed Poetical Works (dedicated to him). Storey died of bronchitis at home at 12 Harley St., Battersea, London, on 7 July 1860, leaving an estate valued at under £100. (ODNB 13 Jan. 2025; findmypast.com 13 Jan. 2025; Leeds Intelligencer 14 July 1860; “Preface,” Poetical Works [1857]; Goodridge) HJ
Other Names:
- Robert Story