Ebenezer Elliott

Ebenezer Elliott ( born March 17, 1781 Masborough, Yorkshire, † December 1, 1849 in Houghton in Barnsley ) was an English poet.

Elliott was born in Masborough, Yorkshire. His father ran a hardware store and was a fanatical Calvinist.

After visiting several schools, he joined at age 16 in his father's business, without neglecting his autodidactic studies of botany and literature. For his work, but he only got a little pocket money. At seventeen, he wrote his first poem Vernal Walk and several volumes of poetry, which were not a great success.

After his marriage, his wife put some money in the hardware store of her father. The company went bankrupt but what accelerated the death of his father. When Elliot was forty, he was therefore forced to start business again from scratch. With a small loan he founded in 1821 again a hardware shop in Sheffield and had generated with her ​​within a short time a considerable fortune. Elliott led the previous economic difficulties back to the Corn Laws ( corn laws ) that prevented free trade in favor of English landowners. He therefore joined the Chartist movement, whose aim was to abolish the Corn Laws.

This political commitment has also changed aim and style of his poetry. The Corn Law Rhymes ( three editions to 1831 ) awarded the rage about these laws in a simple and powerful language expression. Another focus of his work was the description of the working width of the steel workers.

In 1841, he broke up his business in Sheffield and could be financially secure retire after Houghton in Barnsley, where he died in 1849.

1850 published two volumes of More Prose and Verse by the Corn Law Rhymer. The usual fate of political poetry escaped his work by their popularity, which lasted until the last century. His verses are almost as popular songs.