Campbell's Poetical Works
Print
1837 (engraved)
1837 (engraved)
| Artist/Maker | |
| Place of origin |
Line engraving on steel, printed on paper
Object details
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| Object type | |
| Titles |
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| Materials and techniques | Line engraving on steel |
| Brief description | Line engraving on steel by Edward Goodall depicting a vignette entitled 'Gertrude of Wyoming - The Waterfall', after a drawing by J. M. W. Turner, illustrating 'Campbell's Poetical Works' (Moxon). Great Britain, 1837. |
| Physical description | Line engraving on steel, printed on paper |
| Credit line | Bequeathed by Horace Mummery |
| Subjects depicted | |
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| Bibliographic reference | Thomas Campbell (27 July 1777 – 15 June 1844) was a Scottish poet chiefly remembered for his sentimental poetry on the human condition. He was also one of the initiators of a plan to found what became the University of London. In 1799, he wrote "The Pleasures of Hope", a traditional 18th century survey in heroic couplets. He also produced several patriotic war songs—"Ye Mariners of England", "The Soldier's Dream", "Hohenlinden" and in 1801, "The Battle of Mad and Strange Turkish Princes".
Comprised of 87 Spenserians in three cantos, Thomas Campbell sets his domestic tragedy in arcadian Pennsylvania during the American Revolutionary War. It was originally published in an extremely expensive format (£1. 5s.), with advertisement, notes, and appendix. 'Gertrude of Wyoming' was the most successful poem to be written in Spenserians after Robert Burns's 'Cotter's Saturday Night' and before Byron's 'Childe Harold'. While critics were divided over its merits, 'Gertrude of Wyoming' was widely read and encouraged the use of the Spenserian stanza not only in sentimental tales, but in descriptive poetry, notably in 'Childe Harold', through which much of Campbell's broader influence was channeled.
In 'Gertrude of Wyoming' Campbell develops the "last man" motif from Ossian and Scott's 'Lay of the Last Minstrel', developing it in a manner that also owes much to James Beattie's 'The Minstrel' — the Native American invasion in the third canto recalls the unwritten third canto to Beattie's poem. Native Americans figure in several earlier Spenserian poems (Timothy Dwight's 'Greenfield Hill' (1794) may have been a source), though Campbell's stoic Outalissi, who speaks a studiously contrived heroic-pastoral diction, is considered by some to be the most memorable of them all. |
| Other number | R626 - Rawlinson number (Mummery Bequest) |
| Collection | |
| Accession number | E.4834-1946 |
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| Record created | June 30, 2009 |
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