Details of George Hull's life are sparse.  Although several writers have left biographic sketches, they drawn mainly on a single source, an appraisal of Hull's poetry written by the Lancashire poet Joseph Baron and published in The Blackburn Times in 1902.
 

    Baron tell us that GEORGE HULL was born at 38, Eanam, Blackburn on May 10th, 1863, to Alice (née Atkinson) and John Hull, a coal merchant.  His younger days were spent mostly in the countryside, for when he was one year old his parents removed to Hoghton and from there to Croston.

    At Croston, George attended a dame school, an early form of a private elementary school usually taught by a women ("dame") and often located within her home.

    Some six years later, the family returned to Blackburn where George continued his education, first at St. Ann's, King Street, and later at St. Mary's, Islington, which, with other evidence—not least his poetry—suggests strongly that George was from a Roman Catholic family.

    On leaving school George began a varied career.  He first found work in an architect's office; then as clerk to an engineer; as clerk to a brass founder; in an unknown capacity to a builder; and as engrossing clerk to a solicitor, work in which George remained for eight years.  In 1891, he entered his father's coal business, where Baron records him working in 1902, but without stating whether this was 'at the coal face'—weighing out the black nuggets at the railway company's coal sidings, loading up the coal-wagon, and humping the hundredweight sacks to customers' coal-holes (in all weathers)—or whether the business was of sufficient extent to permit George to exercise his managerial skills at head office.

    Up to this date, Census returns (to 1901) supplemented by Hull's poetry allow a little more flesh to be added to Baron's skeletal account.  The 1871 Census shows the Hull family—John, aged 38, a "Cotton Cloth Looker"; Alice, aged 34, ditto; George, aged 7; James, aged 3; and William (aged 10 months) — to be domiciled at   74 Dean St., Saint Peter, Blackburn, together with Charles Pickup, a "boarder" and by occupation a Railway Goods Porter.  Ten years later, George had acquired two more siblings, John, aged 8; and Alice, aged 5, while John Hull, now employed as a "Clerk" — as is George — had become a widower.  James is described as a "Brass Finisher Apprentice" and William (aged 10) a "Scholar and Half Timer in Cotton Mill" (half the day at school and half in working in the mill), which suggests that the family were not well off and that every member was required to contribute to its exchequer.  Charles Pickup the boarder had by now been replaced by John Hull's sister-in-law, Mary Atkinson, in the role of "House Keeper."  Moving on 10 years finds George, himself now a widower and by occupation a "Solictors' Clerk Law", living with his mother-in-law, Sarah Bolton and her extended family at 259 Hoghton Lane, Walton-le-Dale, then a village to the south of the River Ribble near Preston.  In the daily experience of our Victorian forebears, Death lurked just around the corner.  Hull tells us in his poetry that his first marriage was short-lived; the Ballad of Lily-Mary suggests that his wife died in childbirth and, in a postscript, that their baby soon followed its mother; The Angel Bride adds further detail.

    In the 1901 Census return, George (now aged 37) is shown still resident at Walton-le-Dale but now remarried—to Mary (aged 30)—and the father of three sons, John, aged 5; William, aged 3 and Wilfred aged 10 months, both of whom were later to survive a trip to hospital (Two Little Wills Away and To a Hospital Nurse).  George describes his occupation as "Coal Merchant and Journalist on own account."  Maybe a daughter then arrived (To Mary Winifried) and either she, or perhaps another daughter — but not Sweet Hannah — reached adulthood . . . .

    Sometime after 1901, George's career took another change in direction; in her "Lancashire Anthology" (1923), May Yates describes his occupation as "Lancashire Representative to Messrs. Burns, Oates & Washbourne, Ltd.", a firm of London publishers, particularly of Roman Catholic literature.  In the following year, John Randal Swann, in his "Lancashire Authors", states that Hull continued to live at Walton-le-Dale.  A final entry then appears in G. H. Whittacker's "A Lancashire Garland" of 1933, which merely records George Hull's death on February 21st of that year.
 

I' th' daytime factory chimblies belch     Their smook i' mony a street, There's drunken fooak an' railway trains     As rowl abeawt o neet. There's childer thin, that's never seen     The bonny brids an' trees; Their faces look so white for want     O' th' healthy country breeze. From...A Country Life for Me

Two views of George Hull's birthplace, the Eanam area of Blackburn as it was ca. 1930. Photographs by kind permission of Blackburn & Darwin Community History.

    There is more substance in the record of Hull's literary legacy, for, in addition to his output reproduced in these pages, Baron and other writers provide some historical context.  Baron records (in "North Country Poets," 1889) that Hull "was not at all aware that he possessed the gift of song until he was in his 'late teens;' but the perusal of Longfellow's poems, and the charming prose romance "Hyperion," settled the matter beyond doubt, for he set to work at once, and poem after poem was despatched to different magazines."  Baron goes on to say that George's first verse appeared in Facts and Fancies (ca. 1883) followed by a considerable quantity of devotional verse which was published in The Lamp, a Roman Catholic magazine.  George also contributed to Manchester, Preston, Blackburn and other newspapers, including a series entitled "Cracks bi th' Winter Fire" published in the Lancashire Evening Post, "Lyrics of Lancashire" and other stories in dialect published in the Preston Guardian.  He was also joint author with Cornelius McManus of a small volume of rather sentimental "Tales from the Ribble Valley".  Swann records that "on the occasion of the King's visit to Lancashire in 1913, Mr. Hull won the prize offered by the Daily Mail for the best poem of welcome in the dialect", "Yo're Welcome, King George an' Queen Mary".

    Hull's first published poetry collection appeared in 1894 under the title of "The Heroes of the Heart, and other Lyrical Poems."  This was followed in 1902 by "The Poets and Poetry of Blackburn (1793-1902)", published by subscription and a volume about which Baron was enthusiastic.  Writing in the Blackburn Times, he described Hull's important anthology as one that will remain "a monument to his industry and skill, and be treasured by all interested in local poetry," while in G. H. Whittacker's view, expressed some thirty years later, it comprises "a well compiled feast of biography, with copious poetic examples, which show that not only has Blackburn been exceptionally well blessed with poets, but also that their output has been remarkable in quality."  "The Poets and Poetry of Blackburn" is indeed a monument to Hull's industry and skill, to which the many photographic portraits of the poets that grace his cameos add historical interest.  Thus, the Manchester Guardian's surprisingly parochial view of Hull's 'Poets' (from the days before the Internet led to Blackburn's ― and, indeed, Lancashire's ― poets and poetry acquiring wider than "local value") . . . .

The Guardian, 3rd Feb., 1903.

    In 1922, Hull's complete poetical works appeared under the title "English Lyrics and Lancashire Songs", some three dozen of his poems ― arguably the best in the collection ― being in the Lancashire dialect.

    Hull's plain English poetry can be uncomfortably sentimental and is much coloured — even spoiled — by his continual expression of religious belief, in which lies a strong suggestion that the only route to eternal salvation for the practitioners of "heresey" (or "false teaching") lies in their returning to the "Church of Old England". . . . .

In his analysis, Joseph Baron links Hull's tendency to religious expression to the influence of the Victorian poetess Adelaide Anne Procter, a convert to Roman Catholicism with an even stronger penchant for writing devotional verse.  As Baron puts it, "nothing spasmodic, nothing sensational; just enough of the religious element not to repel the student of secular poetry". . . . but I think, only just.