biographicon.netCrawled Oct 22, 2026
Declan McCormack spoke on John Cunningham, an Irish actor and poet who wrote pastoral works while strolling between the Tees and Tweed.
Robert Fergusson, Edinburgh’s poet laureate, studied English literature at St Andrews University in the 1760s and performed at the Canongate Music Hall.
Samuel Butler, a former stay-maker from York, managed a successful northern theatre circuit in the late 18th and early 19th centuries, touring towns like Richmond.
Declan McCormack was invited to give a paper about the Durham Theatre Company and its impact on the region to the Georgian North Group at Durham University (26.6.25).
Dr Sue Allan discusses Robert Anderson, a calico printer and dialect poet from Carlisle, as a key figure in Cumbria’s folk tradition and Georgian bardic verse.
Literary and Philosophical Society of Newcastle upon Tyne pubic talk (23.4.24)
Declan McCormack presented on John Cunningham, an Irish poet and actor who worked as a stroller in northern England and Scotland, at the Eighteenth-Century Ireland Society Annual Conference 2024 in Galway.
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Morpeth County Hall public talk (7.2.24)
David Erskine Baker, son of microscopist Henry Baker and grandson of Daniel Defoe, abandoned academia for a career in theatre, as described by his friend Phillip Lewis.
Francis Gentleman was an Irish actor, poet, playwright and critic. His memoir records details of his strolling in the North including the period that he helped Thomas Bates to establish the Durham theatre company in about 1760. No portrait of Gentleman survives, but George Parker met him at a gathering in a public house in […]
James Cawdell, born in Baldock in 1749, left an apprenticeship to become an actor, debuting with the Durham theatre company at North Shields in 1769.
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