John Cunningham was born in Dublin, the son of a wine-cooper. He attended grammar school for a time, before, after some early success as a poet, abandoning his family to become a strolling player in England. His career as a provincial actor was centered in Edinburgh and Newcastle. Cunningham acquired reputation as a pastoral poet, and he corresponded for a time with William Shenstone.
TEXT RECORDS:
1760Damon and Phillis.
1761An Elegy on a Pile of Ruins.
1761Day: a Pastoral.
1761On May, wrote in April, 1761.
1763Content. A Pastoral.
1763Corydon: a Pastoral. To the Memory of William Shenstone, Esq.
1763Phyllis. A Pastoral.
1763Pomona. A Pastoral.
1765Fortune: an Apologue.
1766A Pastoral, (not published before).
1766Holyday Gown.
1769The Respite: a Pastoral.
PUBLICATIONS:
Love in a mist: a farce. 1747.
A poetical essay in the manner of elegy on the death of his Majesty. 1760.
Day and other pastorals. 1761.
An elegy on a pile of ruins. 1761.
The contemplatist: a night piece. 1762.
Fortune: an apologue. 1765.
Poems chiefly pastoral. 1766.
Poetical works. 1771.
Poetical works. 1795.
Poems of Goldsmith and Cunningham. 1807.
Poetical works. 1808.
PROFILE AND
ASSOCIATES:
Irish
Catholic
Dissenter
Drogheda school
actor
poet
dramatist
Edinburgh Magazine
Universal Magazine
Newcastle Chronicle
St. James's Chronicle
David Garrick
William Julius Mickle
Joseph Ritson
William Shenstone
REFERENCE:
DNB; NCBEL.
"Memoirs of the late Mr. John Cunningham" Morning Chronicle (14 October 1773); "Memoirs of the late Mr. Cunningham" London Magazine 42 (October 1773) 495-97 [from the Morning Chronicle, with the Garrick anecdotes censured]; "Memoirs of the late Mr. Cunningham" Weekly Miscellany [Sherborne] 1 (13 December 1773) 241-44 [from London Magazine]; Bell's Poets of Great Britain (1776-82) [portrait]; Life in Poetical Works (1795) [portrait]; Robert Anderson, British Poets (1795); William Mudford, "Critique on the Poetry of Cunningham" Universal Magazine NS 1 (May 1804) 488-91; Robert Southey, Specimens of Later English Poets (1807); "Criticism: Gray's Ode to Spring and Cunningham's Morning" Port Folio [Philadelphia] NS 6 (23 September 1808) 203-06; Samuel Jackson Pratt, Cabinet of Poetry (1808); Alexander Chalmers, English Poets (1810); Alexander Chalmers, General Biographical Dictionary (1812-17); Thomas Campbell, Specimens of the British Poets (1819); Richard Ryan, Biographia Hibernica (1819); Ezekiel Sanford, British Poets (1819); Sir Harris Nicholas, in Letters of Joseph Ritson (1833); Robert Chambers, Cyclopaedia of English Literature (1844); Allibone, Critical Dictionary of English Literature (1858-71; 1882); Alfred Webb, Compendium of Irish Biography (1878); D. J. O'Donoghue, Poets of Ireland (1912); Eric Patridge, in Eighteenth-Century English Romantic Poetry (1924); John S. Crone, Concise Dictionary of Irish Biography (1928); E. J. Morley, "John Cunningham" in Essays by Divers Hands NS 19 (1942).
COMMENTARY RECORDS
for John Cunningham:
BIOGRAPHY RECORDS
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AUTHOR AS CRITIC:
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