Susanna Blamire (12 January 1747 – 1794) was an English Romantic poet, sometimes known as 'The Muse of Cumberland' because many of her poems represent rural life in the county and, therefore, provide a valuable contradistinction to those amongst the poems of William Wordsworth that regard the same subject, in addition to those of the other Lake Poets, especially those of Samuel Taylor Coleridge, and in addition to those of Lord Byron, on whose The Prisoner of Chillon her works may have had an influence.

Susannah went as her sister's companion on trips to The Scottish Highlands, London and Ireland[4] In Carlisle, Susanna encountered Catharine Gilpin of Scaleby Castle, who became a friend and possibly, according to Mandell Creighton, a co-author in verse.

[8] Anonymously, to the Scots Musical Museum, Blamire contributed songs in Lallans: What ails this Heart o' Mine?, and The Siller Croun (alias And ye shall walk in Silk Attire).

Furthermore, her poem The Nun's Return to the World [...] may have been an influence on Lord Byron's The Prisoner of Chillon: Indeed, the late Professor Jonathan Wordsworth of St Catharine's College, Cambridge, in his lecture at the dedication service of Susanna's bicentenary memorial tablet in Carlisle Cathedral on 20 March 1994,[13] said: 'We might be listening to Byron's Prisoner of Chillon.'

Following his premature death in 1795, she established Newbottle School, at Houghton-le Spring, County Durham, six miles from Anabella Milbanke’s house in Seaham.

It is quite possible that Byron could have read a manuscript or a transcript of Blamire's poems whilst at Seaham Manor, immediately after his marriage to Milbanke in 1815.

[14] Another interesting connection was through Susanna's niece Mary née Blamire and her husband, The Revd Thomas Young [my great x2 grandparents],[15] who was educated with William Wordsworth at Hawkshead Grammar School and later was Senior Tutor at Trinity College, Cambridge (from 1806) during Byron's time as an undergraduate there.

[17] Charles Dickens in his The Old Curiosity Shop (1841, end of chapter 66) had quoted its first two lines: " 'Sir' said Dick (Swiveller), ... 'we'll make a scholar of the poor Marchioness yet!

He insisted that her Scottish songs are "the high-water mark of her achievement … so good that they can be set beside the best that have ever been produced by Scotsmen writing in their own tongue".

In The New Penguin Book of Romantic Poetry he likened Blamire's social position to that of Jane Austen: ‘the well-to-do maiden aunt’s life of good works and humorous observation'.