Edward Rushton | Laboring-Class Poets Online

After his marriage around 1784 to Isabella Rain, Rushton went on to become editor of the Liverpool Herald. This career was soon cut short after he reproached brutal press-gang practice in several articles, and rebuffed his partner’s suggestion of a retraction.

Disability and Illness:

blind

paralysis

Disability and Illness Description:

partially blind from opthamalia contracted caring for slaves - later regained sight; started the Liverpool School for the Indigent Blind; died of paralysis

Politics and Religion

Affiliations:

radical

abolitionist

In the late 1780s Rushton became a member of a literary and philosophical society – thought to have been the forerunner of William Roscoe and James Currie’s ill-fated radical Debating Society – where the idea of raising funds to offer care for local blind paupers came into effect. The Liverpool School for the Indigent Blind opened in 1791.

Education

Formal Education:

Some formal education

Formal Education Start Age:

6

Formal Education End Age:

11

"He was enrolled at the Liverpool Free School from the age of 6 until the age of 9. He left school and at the age of 11 he became an apprentice with Messrs. Watt and Gregson, a firm that traded in the West Indies" (Wikipedia).

References and Sources

References and Sources:

Biblio Texts:

9-38

(1882 edition) 339-41, 517-28

95-8

Part I, 25, 36

item 784

item 100

1474

480

342-9

Other Digital References:

Oxford Dictionary of National Biography

Wikipedia

Other Analog References:

The Collected Writings of Edward Rushton. Edited by Paul Baines, Liverpool University Press, 2014.

Clarkson, T. The History of the Rise, Progress, and Accomplishment of the Abolition of the African Slave Trade by the British Parliament. Vol. I, London, 1808, pp. 292-414.

Anonymous. Sketches of Obscure Poets. London: Cochrane, 1803, pp. 56-71. (via Google Books)

Dykes, E.B. The Negro in English Romantic Thought. Associated Publishers, 1942.

Martin, C.G. "Coleridge, Edward Rushton, and the Cancelled Note to the 'Monody on the Death of Chatterton.' " Review of English Studies, vol. 17, 1966, pp. 391-492.

Richardson, A., editor. Verse. Pickering and Chatto, 1999.

Magnuson, P. "Coleridge’s Discursive 'Monody on the Death of Chatterton.' " Romanticism on the Net, 2000, 17.

Burke, Tim. " 'Humanity is Now the Pop’lar Cry': Labouring-Class Poets and the Liverpool Slave Trade, 1787-1789." The Eighteenth Century: Theory and Interpretation, vol. 42, no. 3, 2001, pp. 245-63.

Royden, M. "Edward Rushton—Life and times of an 18th Century Radical and the foundation of the Blind School in Liverpool." Mike Royden's Local History Pages, 2001, http://www.roydenhistory.co.uk/mrlhp/local/rushton/rushton.htm.

Hunter, B. Forgotten Hero: The Life and Times of Edward Rushton. Living History Library, 2002.

Dellarosa, Franca. Talking Revolution: Edward Rushton’s Rebellious Poetics 1782-1814. Liverpool University Press, 2015.

Reference Description:

In 2014 the 200th anniversary of Rushton’s death on was marked by a ‘City Wide Exhibition’ in Liverpool and a service of thanksgiving (BBC News online). See also John McReery and Thomas Rushton (qqv).

Personal Map

Relationships

Source	Relationship Type	Target	Description	View
Edward Rushton	wrote about	Thomas Chatterton	Rushton published a volume decrying the neglect of Thomas Chatterton	View
Edward Rushton	wrote to	Thomas Paine	Rushton wrote to Paine about the hypocrisy of slavery	View
Edward Rushton	wrote to	George Washington	"A decade later [1797] he [Rushton] wrote to his former hero George Washington, pointing up the hypocrisy of retaining slaves while fighting for freedom: ‘In the name of justice what can induce you thus to tarnish your own well-earned celebrity and to impair the fair features of American liberty with so foul and indelible a blot’ " (Rowley, Superlist)	View