COOK (ELIZA)

Autograph poem signed "Eliza Cook", titled "Master Onny/ Affectionally inscribed to my dear nieces, Jenny and Annie", with other poems and autograph letters (8)

Footnotes

'HERE GOES – AS BYRON SAYS': WRITINGS FROM THE ORIGINATOR OF THE PHRASE 'LEVELLING UP'.

The poetical work of Eliza Cook (1812-1889) was strongly influenced by her working class background. Her father was a tinman and brazier and, as one of eleven children, she grew up acutely aware of the marginalisation of the lower classes. She naturally gravitated towards the Chartist movement, of which she was an active sympathiser, and is believed to have coined the phrase 'levelling up' in her weekly miscellany Eliza Cook's Journal: '...The number of self-risen men, sprung up from the ranks, is increasing and must increase... And the mass too is advancing with education and knowledge, and they too must gradually become leveled up' she wrote (quoted in Chakrabarty, D., The Chartist Poetry of Eliza Cook: A Study, 30 March 2015, theconfidentialclerk.com website). She was a prolific contributor to the weeklies and periodicals of the day including the Literary Gazette and her simplicity of form and subject matter was enormously popular with the public both in Britain and America, leading to comparisons to Robert Burns, whom she greatly admired. Her poem The Old Armchair of 1838 made her a household name. As well as encouraging education for all, she was a proponent of political and sexual freedom for women: '...The sentiments expressed in Cook's poetry and prose reflect her efforts to break free from the societal limitations imposed on her class and gender... Cook dressed in unconventionally masculine attire and wore her hair short... She never married, and from 1845 to 1849 she was closely linked with the American actress Charlotte Cushman (1816–1876), to whom she wrote passionate poetic tributes...' (Solveig C. Robinson, ODNB).

Our poem 'Master Onny', written for her nieces about the arrival of a cat called Master Johnny, appears to be unpublished. 'Time's Changes', also included here, was widely published in a longer form, in her Journal (16 April 1853, no.207, p.393) and in Poems by Eliza Cook, London, 1861.