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Parnassus, the mountain in Greece, has become a metaphor for the home of poetry and learning - think of Montparnasse in Paris...
Brian Maidment writes of
...the Parnassian strand in working class writing, which has as its aim the demonstration of cultural achievement within the working and artisan class...
...represents a conscious cultural attempt to join in literary discourse at the highest possible level, to have a voice, on equal terms with all others, in the cultural and philosophical debates of the time...
... the endeavour was both culturally necessary and often personally heroic...
...it denies middle class claims to sole ownership of literary tradition...
Brian Maidment, The Poorhouse Fugitives, 1987, p 14-15
The English Parnassus has, in truth, abounded in rich mines of silver and gold, which have been worked with zeal and success by the dwellers on its green slopes.
And its inhabitants have not only reaped wealth from their poetic labours, but honours of all kinds, and from all hands, have been heaped upon them in profusion. Their society has been courted with eagerness by the most distinguished of the land ; and so widely has the feeling in their favour spread, that to be a Poet has become a passport to the admiration and reverence of all classes... ...Were any example wanted of the encouragement and patronage accorded to poetic merit, it may be found in the life of Robert Story.
John James, 'Life of Robert Story', p vii-viii
Robert Story's assault on Parnassus...
1.
He writes a heroic verse drama...
[He] moulded the whole plot into a drama, called 'The Outlaw,' the greater portion being written in 1835. He now completed this drama, and issued prospectuses to publish it by subscription. The subscription list did not fill as he expected ; but the late Miss Currer, the amiable proprietor of Eshton Hall, and a true friend of literary merit, to whom he had dedicated the work, somewhat made up the deficiency by presenting to him twenty pounds...
John James, 'Life of Robert Story', p li-lii
Title page of The Outlaw, 1839, attached below...
Fans of the Bronte sisters will have noted that Yorkshire name 'Currer' - and the Brontes, including Branwell Bronte, were part of Robert Story's circle of poets and would-be poets. One of the places where Robert Story's work has appeared in the academic record is in...
A Yorkshire Background for "Wuthering Heights"
Christopher Heywood
The Modern Language Review
Vol. 88, No. 4 (Oct., 1993), pp. 817-830
I have attached a page from Heywood's article, below - he tells us that The Outlaw was first published in the Halifax Guardian.
Heywood makes the point that there were many Yorkshire based writers exploiting Yorkshire lore and family legends. And amongst these writers were the Brontes - and Robert Story.
2.
He writes an epic poem...
He now resolved to write a long Poem, something of an Epic, laying the plot as in ' The Outlaw,' in both the districts just mentioned, and choosing for heroes those who figured in the contest between Alfred the Great, and the Danes. At first, he designated this piece ' Aymund the Dane,' but afterwards changed it to ' Guthrum the Dane.'
John James, 'Life of Robert Story', p lxiii
Title page of Guthrum the Dane, 1852, attached below...
Trivia...
Brian Blessed played Guthrum in the television series, Churchill's People, the King Alfred episode, broadcast January 1975.
Michael York played Guthrum in the 1969 film Alfred the Great. David Hemmings played King Alfred, with Prunella Ransome as his wife Aelhswith.
http://cf2.imgobject.com/t/p/original/z9qOYHEa9IVqbjJUD4ugVfkpx9I.jpg
3.
He picks a quarrel with the Poet Laureate...
This is an intriguing example of Robert Story's combative nature in action - here using a poem to question Tennyson's choice of poetic subject matter. Why explore Arthurian legend when there were equally epic, and moving, stories in our own time? - let us look at the life of Louis-Napoléon Bonaparte, Napoleon III...
Poet! deal no more in fiction;
Trick no hero of the brain;
Measured verse, and gorgeous diction,
Spent on Myths, are spent in vain...
...Sing the youthful Outcast wandering
Over lands that hold but foes;
Yet where'er he wanders pondering
To his ills a glorious close...
Title page of The Third Napoleon, 1854, attached below...
4.
He is mentioned in the same breath as Robert Burns - and he is invited to the Robert Burns Centenary...
One of the most gratifying events of his life was the invitation he received from the committee appointed to manage the celebration of Burns' Centenary Festival, at Burns' Cottage, Alloway, on the 25th January, 1859.
John James, 'Life of Robert Story' p lxx
...that which, to my judgment, shews his poetic faculty to the best advantage, in his minor pieces, is the Ode on Burns' Centenary. Here the richness of his imagination, the simplicity of his construction, and the natural turn of his expression, are fully displayed...
John James, 'Life of Robert Story' p lxxxviii
Robert Story's poem for the Burns Centenary made it into a 1859 collection, The Burns Centenary Poems: a Collection of fifty of the best...
I have attached below a pdf of the title page of that book, and the full text of Robert Story's poem as it appears in that book.
And, to play fair, I attach, below, a parody of Robert Story that appeared in the Bradford Observer. It captures very well Story's tics and typographical excesses...
Patrick O'Sullivan
April 2013
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