Only I would care

So, the circulation records of the working class Huddersfield Educational Institute Library exist for 1856-57.


Of the poetry books, the two most popular were Songs of Home and Happiness and the pious Songs of the Affections by Felicia Hemans.


We know Hemans because of the endless parodies of ‘The Boy Stood on the Burning Deck’ but she was very popular in her time.


Poets that we know well today—Cowper, Gray, Burns, Collins, Young, and Gay—were not borrowed at all.