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THE TEMPLE PRESS, PRINTERS, LETCHWORTH
INTRODUCTION
JEAN INGELOW may be said to
have begun her study of the art of writing child-rhymes and the tales that
are akin to them under Jane and Ann Taylor. A friendship had sprung
up between the families at Walton-on-the-Naze in Essex, where the Ingelow
youngsters used to stay; and "Greedy Dick " and "Mrs. Duck, the notorious
glutton," were among their favourite characters. In her first book,
however, Jean Ingelow showed that she had a note and a child-fantasy of
her own. They are seen in her fairy-ballad of Mimie and of the
forest where the child-fairy lived:
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"When the clouded sun goes in—
Waiting for the thunder,
We can hear their revel din
The moss'd greensward under.
"And I tell you, all the birds
On the branches singing
Utter to us human words
Like a silver ringing." |
Her earliest impressions are reflected in some lines found in
Mopsa, which tell of a ship coming up the river with a jolly gang
of towing men. She was born at Boston, Lincolnshire, on the 17th of
March 1820; the daughter of a banker who had married a Scottish wife, Jean
Kilgour. Her grandfather owned some of the ships that came up the
Boston water; and the scenery of that fen country entered into her inner
mind. Her fine ballad, "High Tide on
the Coast of Lincolnshire," was one outcome of those early days.
In middle life she came to live in London, and she wrote of the city and
its shifting and unending throng; but her best pages are those, whether
verse or prose, that reflect the things of the seashore and waterside, the
"empty sky," the "world of heather," which she knew as a child in
Lincolnshire and Essex. Ipswich, Filey Brig in Yorkshire, and other
places are to be counted in her own history; and some of the memories that
are a picture of her early days may be found in her long story
Off the Skelligs, where she sketches her
birthplace, and the house by the wharves, with a room in the rooftree
overlooking the ships and a long reach of the river.
Jean Ingelow died in Kensington in 1897; and a memorial brass
is to be seen bearing her name in the church of St. Barnabas there.
Her works include the following stories and volumes of
poems:—
WORKS: A Rhyming Chronicle of Incidents and Feelings, 1850;
Allerton and Dreux, 1851; Tales of Orris, 1860; Poems, with 4th edition in
same year, 1863; illustrated by Pinwell, Poynter, and others, 1866;
Studies for Stories, 1864; 5th edition, 1868; Stories Told to a Child,
1865; another edition, 1892; Home Thoughts and Home Scenes, 1865; Little
Rie and the Rosebuds, 1867; The Suspicious Jackdaw, and the Life of John
Smith, 1867; The Grandmother's Shoe, 1867; The Golden Opportunity, 1867;
Deborah's Book, and The Lonely Rock, 1867; A Story of Doom, and other
Poems, 1867; The Moorish Gold and The One-Eyed Servant, 1867; The Minnows
with Silver Tails, and Two Ways of Telling a Story, 1867; The Wild-Duck
Shooter, and I Have a Right, 1867; A Sister's Bye-Hours, 1868; Mopsa the
Fairy, 1869; another edition, 1871; The Little Wonder-Horn, 1872; another
edition, 1877; Off the Skelligs, 1872; 2nd edition, 1879; Fated to be
Free, 1873; 2nd edition, 1875; other editions, 1876, 1879; Poems, 2nd
series, i876; Poems, new edition in 2 vols., Vol. I. from 23rd edition,
Vol. II. from 6th edition, 1879; Sarah de Berenger, 1879; other editions,
1880, 1886; Don John: a story, 1881; another edition, 1881; High-Tide on
the Coast of Lincolnshire 1571, 1883; Poems of the Old Days and the New,
1885; John Jerome, 1886; Lyrical and other Poems selected from the
Writings of J. L, 1886; The Little Wonder-Box, 1887; Very Young, and Quite
Another Story, 1890; Selections, edited by Mackenzie Bell (Poets and
Poetry of the Century), 1892; The Old Man's Prayer, 1895; Poetical Works
of J. L, 1898; Laura Richmond, 1901; The Black Polyanthus, and Widow
Maclean, 1903; Poems (Muses' Library), 1906; Poems, with an Introduction
by Alice Meynell (Red Letter Library), 1908; Poems, selected and arranged
by Andrew Lang (Longman's Pocket Library), 1908.
LIFE: Short biography in Poets and Poetry of the Century edition of Poems,
by Mackenzie Bell, 1892; some Recollections of Jean Ingelow and her Early
Friends, 1901.
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Dedicated
TO
MY DEAR LITTLE COUSIN
JANET HOLLWAY
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