The Poems of John Byrom Volume IV Further Manuscript and Printed Verse

This volume adds a significant amount of previously uncollected verse to the canon of the stenographer, scholar, and religious seeker John Byrom (1692–1763), one of Manchester’s most notable eighteenth-century residents. It is a continuation of the three volumes of Byrom’s Poems edited by Adolphus William Ward, published by the Chetham Society between 1894 and 1912.
Transcriptions of each poem – including drafts and fragments, and material deciphered from shorthand – are accompanied by explanatory notes on contexts and sources. Some help to build a fuller picture of Byrom’s religious thinking and allegiances; others add to our knowledge of his involvement with antiquarian, literary, medical and scholarly worlds both in and beyond the Manchester region; and in far more there is evidence of his reactions to political and ecclesiastical contention in north-west England, particularly in the aftermath of the Jacobite rebellion of 1745–6.