author
John Jones
b. 1774
A self-educated working-class poet from the Forest of Dean, he wrote from the perspective of ordinary life and service. His surviving reputation rests largely on Attempts in Verse (1831), published with autobiographical material and an introduction by Robert Southey.
1 Audiobook
About the author
Born in January 1774, John Jones was an English working-class poet from Clearwell in the Forest of Dean. According to the Database of Victorian Periodical Poetry, he had only a few years of schooling and was largely self-educated before becoming a domestic servant in Bath at about age seventeen.
Jones is chiefly known for Attempts in Verse, a volume published in London in 1831. The book included an account of his life written by himself, and it was framed by Robert Southey's essay on "uneducated poets," which helped place Jones among the laboring-class writers who were beginning to attract wider literary attention.
Very little biographical detail seems to be widely documented beyond those basics, but that scarcity is part of what makes him interesting: his work preserves a rare voice from outside the usual literary circles of his time.