author
Robert Stephen Hawker
d. 1875
An Anglican priest, poet, and antiquarian remembered as the famously eccentric “Parson Hawker,” he gave Cornwall one of its best-loved songs, “The Song of the Western Men.” His life mixed literary ambition, deep attachment to place, and a flair for the dramatic that still makes him memorable today.
1 Audiobook
Footprints of Former Men in Far Cornwall
by Robert Stephen Hawker
About the author
Born in 1803 and dying in 1875, Robert Stephen Hawker was an English clergyman, poet, and antiquarian closely associated with Cornwall. He is best known for writing The Song of the Western Men, the stirring ballad that helped fix his name in literary and Cornish cultural history.
Hawker served for many years as vicar of Morwenstow, a remote coastal parish that became central to both his life and his writing. Accounts of him often describe him as an eccentric figure, and that reputation has lasted almost as strongly as his poetry. His interests reached beyond verse into local history and legend, which gave much of his work its strong sense of place.
He remains an appealing literary character because his life seems to sit halfway between history and folklore: a serious churchman and writer, but also a man remembered for unusual habits, vivid imagination, and deep feeling for the landscape around him.