Ebenezer Elliott

Stephen Van-Hagen (University of Coventry)

The Literary Encyclopedia. Volume 1.2.1.06: English Writing and Culture of the Romantic Period, 1789-1837.
Vol. editors: Daniel Cook (University of Dundee), Daniel Robinson (Widener University), Emily Rohrbach (University of Durham)

Dates

Born 17 Mar 1781
Died 1 Dec 1849
Activity 1801-1849

Places

Born in England
Active in England

Activities

Primary

Poet

Resources

Elliott's Works

Save to Bookshelf

The son of an iron worker who was an ultra-Calvinist and a political radical, Ebenezer Elliott was born in 1781 at Masbrough, Rotherham. Elliott was disfigured by small-pox when six years old, and received only a rudimentary education. He worked at his father's business from a young age. When he married a Rotherham girl who brought a small fortune to the marriage, he invested in the family firm. The business was already virtually bankrupt however, and Elliott lost all the money. He appears to have blamed this on the protectionist Corn Laws which were passed by Lord Liverpool's government in 1815 as a reaction to the end of the Napoleonic wars. When Elliott's wife's family raised some money in 1821, he used it to begin a business in the iron trade in Sheffield. This time he was…

Please log in to consult the article in its entirety. If you are a member (student of staff) of a subscribing institution (see List), you should be able to access the LE on campus directly (without the need to log in), and off-campus either via the institutional log in we offer, or via your institution's remote access facilities, or by creating a personal user account with your institutional email address. If you are not a member of a subscribing institution, you will need to purchase a personal subscription. For more information on how to subscribe as an individual user, please see under Individual Subcriptions.

1113 words

Citation: Van-Hagen, Stephen. "Ebenezer Elliott". The Literary Encyclopedia. First published 21 October 2006; last revised 19 September 2007. [https://www.litencyc.com/php/speople.php?rec=true&UID=1414, accessed 27 November 2024.]