The River Side / The River's Side - A Poem by R A Millikin. [With an original Watercolour as Frontispice, possibly by Millikin himself, who was, among many other things, also a Watercolour-Artist]. Book I - Book II - Book III.

Milliken, Richard Alfred / [Provenance: Hugh Hendrick, Cork, 1850].

Published by [Cork], [1807]., 1807

First and only Edition. Quarto. Frontispice - Watercolour, 147 pages with several of the pages misbound but complete. Private Half-Leather. Binding and Volume overall in very poor condition. Wide margins, formerly stitched. The Volume ahas all the trademarks of a working-copy, which could explain the stunning Watercolour as Frontispice (or even as titlepage). Faded dampstain to upper margins. While the Volume is rough, it has the typical charme of an underestimated, very rare publication by a local Cork poet [which is manifested by Milliken dedicating the work to the members of the Cork Library Society at the time. This Volume is of utmost rarity. Milliken, (Millikin) Richard Alfred (1767 1815), poet, painter, and dramatist, was born 8 September 1767, the second eldest of five children of Robert Milliken, of Castlemartyr, Co. Cork, and Elizabeth Milliken (née Battaley), of Wiltshire. Of Scottish quaker ancestry (though by his birth the family were conforming to the established church), after attending school in Castlemartyr, at age 13 he went to Midleton school; thereafter his family moved to Cork city, where he became a lawyer's apprentice. Three years later he moved to Dublin to enter the courts of law, but his admission was obstructed by another lawyer, who held that Milliken, being a painter, was unsuitable for the legal profession. Eventually he was admitted to the King's Inns (1792), then returned to Cork to work as a debt collector. His employment being limited owing to lack of patronage, he devoted much time to composing sonnets and translating parts of the odes of Anacreon. Several of his poems were published in a Cork magazine, the Monthly Miscellany, in 1795. With his sister, teacher and novelist Anna Milliken, he edited a monthly literary publication, The Casket, or Hesperian Magazine (1797 8), within which some of his poems, including Sonnet to spring and The beggar boy , first appeared. At the outbreak of the 1798 rebellion, he joined the Royal Cork Volunteers yeomanry corps, where he was promoted from the ranks and made secretary. He composed his best known poem The groves of Blarney (1797/8) after hearing the song Sweet Castle Hyde at a party, and determining to surpass the absurdity of the latter burlesque. Although written in a humorous, even nonsensical tone, his poem evokes submerged political feeling through its evocation of Lady Jeffreys (the pro-rightboy Arabella Jeffereyes (qv), once proprietor of Blarney castle). The now standard text of the poem that included in The popular songs of Ireland (1834), edited by T. Crofton Croker (qv) includes additional stanzas (perhaps by Father Prout (qv)) to those written by Milliken. This and other features of the poem its spontaneous composition, uncertain date, setting to a traditional tune, and history of public performance are traits more usually associated with anonymous folk poetry. Milliken's other familiar work, the dialect poem De groves of de Pool , ironically describes the return (the advance back again ) of the Cork city militia after the 1798 rising. Joining the Apollo Society of Amateur Actors, Patrick St., Cork, on its formation (1805), he designed sets and acted in their productions; money raised by the society was used for charitable purposes locally. His comedy Dongourney in Egypt was performed in Sadler's Wells theatre, London (1805 6). Other of his plays include Darby in arms , performed in Dublin (1810), Macha , and Anaconda . His lengthy blank-verse poem The river-side (1807), a quarto volume in three books, was dedicated to members of the Cork Library Society. The slave of Surinam; or, Innocent victim of cruelty (1810) is a romantic tale set in the South American Dutch colony. He wrote a prologue for a puppet exhibition, the Patagonian Theatre , held in Cork Institution. He was also a watercolour artist, and took lessons from Francis Nicholson of London. Hoping to cultivate the study of the fine arts in Cork, he helped. Seller Inventory # 31764AB

Bibliographic Details

Title: The River Side / The River's Side - A Poem ...
Publisher: [Cork], [1807].
Publication Date: 1807
Binding: Soft cover