Ebenezer Elliott
Ebenezer Elliott, born on March 17, 1781, in Masborough, Yorkshire, was an influential English poet and political activist, often referred to as "The Corn Law Rhymer." He came from a modest background, with a father who was an iron worker and a strict Calvinist, and a mother in poor health. Despite struggling with formal education and facing personal challenges, such as being scarred by smallpox at a young age, Elliott developed a passion for self-education and literature, writing his first poem at seventeen. He became particularly concerned with social injustices after witnessing public punishment in his youth.
Elliott's entrepreneurial efforts in the iron industry were met with ups and downs, leading him to advocate against the Corn Laws, which he viewed as oppressive taxes on bread. His literary work, especially the "Corn Law Rhymes," captured the intense social climate of his time and contributed significantly to his recognition. Elliott's life journey led him to retire from business in 1841 to focus on his writing, and he lived to see the repeal of the bread tax before his death on December 1, 1849. His legacy endures, highlighted by a bronze statue erected in his honor, symbolizing his dedication to the struggles of the poor and marginalized.
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Subject Terms
Ebenezer Elliott
Poet
- Born: March 17, 1781
- Birthplace: The New Foundry, Masborough, Yorkshire, England
- Died: December 1, 1849
- Place of death: Great Houghton, Yorkshire, England
Biography
Ebenezer Elliott was born on March 17, 1781, at the New Foundry, Masborough,Yorkshire, England. His father, also Ebenezer, known as “Devil Elliott,” was the descendant of border raiders, an iron worker, and a staunch Calvinist. His mother, a woman in perpetual bad health, descended from a family of freeholders near Huddersfield. Young Ebenezer was one of eleven children, only eight of whom survived into adulthood. He attended several schools in his early youth, but he was not a distinguished student, and he was unhappy with his formal education.
At six years of age, Elliott contracted smallpox, which left him scarred and shy. A solitary boy, he began to read extensively on his own. He continued with his self-education even after he went to work for his father at sixteen. Among his leisure-time studies was the study of botany. It was his love of nature, he said, that brought him “to desert both alehouse and chapel.” At seventeen he wrote his first poem: “Vernal Walk.” While still a young man, he also received another kind of education: He saw another young man of his acquaintance publicly flogged for stealing a chicken. This marked the beginning of Elliott’s concerns with the injustices and the occasional brutality of society.
Ebenezer Elliott married a woman of means, but he invested her fortune in his father’s failing business, and he lost it all. He was forced to live for a time on the charity of his wife’s sisters. In 1821, he, again with assistance from his wife’s family, started his own business as an iron merchant. For many years, his business prospered. After 1837, when he suffered losses once more, he blamed the corn laws, as he had before.
With funds salvaged from his business, he relocated yet again. At this point he became very active in politics as well as in literature and business. He came to devote his political and artistic efforts to the repeal what he called the bread tax: “Our labour, our skill, our profits, our hopes, our lives, our children’s souls,” he said, “are bread taxed.” Much of his earlier verse had been marked by his lack of education and sophistication. However, his Corn Law Rhymes, which made him famous, are said to “give us a true idea of the fierce passion of the times.”
Elliott retired from business in 1841, and turned his attention more completely to literature. He died at Great Houghton on December 1, 1849, survived by his wife and by most of his thirteen children. “The Corn Law Rhymer” had lived to see the much-loathed bread tax abolished. He also lived, though barely, to see his daughter wed to John Watkins, his biographer.
A bronze statue of Elliott, paid for by the people of Sheffield and Rotherham, was erected in 1854, and later moved to Sheffield’s Weston Park. Walter Savage Landor wrote a poem for the occasion. However, Elliott’s own words represent him well: “ Here lies/The Poet of the Poor/His books were rivers, woods and skies. . . /His teachers were the town hearts’ wail,/The tyrant, and the slave,/. . . [He] honour’d in a peasant’s form/The equal of the great.”