The Sun Inn Group
[1][2] By the 19th century it was one of the oldest surviving buildings in Manchester, though its true age was unknown: So far back as its history can be traced, it has always been an inn or alehouse, and it has long borne the sign of the Sun.
[11][12] While Manchester was considered by many to be culturally undeveloped in the early-19th century, it was infamous for its class politics—particularly after the Peterloo massacre of 1819, which galvanised many in the city (and the wider country) towards unionisation, and campaigning for better democratic representation and labour rights.
[11][16] They met in whichever spaces were available—shops, each other's homes, and pubs—and the Sun Inn was especially popular by the late-1830s, where readings and debates often took place alongside other typical pub activities like cards, darts, gambling, and music.
[17][5] Originally from Wigan, Prince had apprenticed under his father as a reed-maker for thatched roofs before marrying at 19 and settling in Hyde, but he had wanted to become a poet ever since being introduced to the works of Lord Byron at the age of 13.
[5] In 1840, having been writing verse for several years without attracting the attention of publishers, he left his factory job in Hyde to move with his family to the building opposite the Sun Inn on Long Millgate, where he opened a book and stationery shop on the ground floor.
[16] The Group was largely made up of working class, self-taught writers who had to hold down other jobs to support their literary ambitions—for example, Samuel Bamford was a weaver, Charles Swain was a lithographer, Elijah Ridings was a bell-ringer, and Richard Wright Procter was a barber.
[16] Their output varied widely in style, tone, and even language, with some members writing verse in their own distinctive Lancashire dialect—a literary choice which faced considerable prejudice from the middle- and upper-class cultural establishment of the time.
"[5] It was a critical success—attracting extra attention in part because of the novelty of his working-class background—and the Sun Inn earned the nickname "Poet's Corner," with working class writers flocking there from across Lancashire.
"[25][5] The Association was intended to be a formal organisation, meeting regularly, which would launch its own monthly literary journal to promote the Sun Inn Group's works to a wider audience beyond Lancashire, and which more generally would "protect and encourage British authors.
[11] At around this time the Sun Inn's landlord, William Earnshaw, recognised the business opportunity presented by the pub's notoriety as a literary venue and officially embraced the name "Poet's Corner," carving it into the lintel above the entrance and commissioning a new sign for the outside wall.
In his memoir, Group member Richard Wright Procter describes the Lancashire Literary Association as "a somewhat ambitious scheme that fell still-born from the mind of its projector," which, in retrospect, was always doomed to fail.
[16][31] However, the Group's longer-term "memory" lasted only a few decades according to William Arthur Shaw, who wrote in 1894 that it was "fading fast," though he added that as long as the former Inn building itself survived "there will still abide with us an evidence and an influence of a provincial—let us say it—a Manchester poetry, very true, if not very abundant in power, and provincial, it may be, only by name and accident.
"[2] Historian Thomas Swindells retroactively coined "the Bards of Cottonopolis" as a name for the Group in 1906, and argued that the Sun Inn should have been recognised as an important local literary landmark and not allowed to fall into disrepair.
[29] In a 2017 retrospective for P. N. Review, Michael Powell wrote that "few of the poems produced for [The Festive Wreath] have aged well," with the Group's most celebrated members now mainly remembered for literature other than their poetry—most notably Isabella Banks for The Manchester Man, and Samuel Bamford for Passages in the Life of a Radical.
However, he also noted that the Sun Inn represented a precursor to the role of British pubs in the late-20th century as "a vital space for poetry, a place where young poets can come together, to get on a stage, perform, and read their work to a sympathetic audience of fellow writers.
[4] "The Poet's Corner" was a drinking song intended as a comic interlude in the middle of an otherwise serious evening, and some of the people referenced are difficult to identify due to lacking full names or being only alluded to via cryptic in-jokes.
