Bigg, John Stanyan

(1828-1865)

   Born at Ulverston in the Lake District and educated there and in Warwickshire, Bigg showed great literary promise at an early age; he used to recite the Arabian Nights to his friends, who paid him for the entertainment. He was editor for many years of the Ulverston Advertiser (he became proprietor in 1860) and for some years editor of the Irish paper Downshire Protestant. Bigg belonged to the "Spasmodic School," a derogatory term applied to certain poets by Professor Aytoun in his spasmodic tragedy Firmilian (1854). Some of his poems: "An Irish Picture," "Hartley Pit Catastrophe," "Night and the Soul," "Only a Little House," "Remorse," "Shifting Scenes and Other Poems," "Spring and Summer," "The Huguenot's Doom," "The Sea-King."

   Sources: Dictionary of National Biography. Electronic Edition 1.1. Oxford University Press, 1997. English Poetry: Author Search. Chadwyck-Healey Ltd., 1995 (http://www.lib.utexas.edu:8080/search/epoetry/author.html). The Columbia Granger's Index to Poetry. 11th ed. The Columbia Granger's World of Poetry, Columbia University Press, 2005 (http://www.columbiagrangers.org). The New Oxford Book of Victorian Verse. Christopher Ricks, ed. Oxford University Press, 1987.