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Joseph Skipsey, from the biography of him written by the Rt Hon Robert Spence Watson (1909). “The life of the pit” wrote Watson “which, at a distance, looks dark and gloomy and is hazardous and uncertain, has its own beauty, and we know it when that beauty is interpreted and shown to us by Joseph Skipsey.” He believed that it was Skipsey’s poetic genius, amounting almost to the greatness of a pioneer, to show us the beauty hidden in such unpromising material.
Introduction
Joseph Skipsey (1832-1903) taught himself to read and write down a Northumberland pit when he was just seven. He subsequently became a nationally-recognised poet, praised by Wilde and Tennyson, but it was an art born of hardship and personal tragedy.
AT the age of seven, Joseph Skipsey started work in his hometown colliery at Percy Main in Northumberland. He worked six to twelve hours a day – in winter, he saw the sun only on a Sunday — operating the trapdoor through which the wagons passed, and his education was limited to the alphabet.
But he scraped together a collection of advertisements and newspapers, and taught himself to write in chalk on the trapdoor by candlelight. He added a Bible, learning by heart the passages he liked best, and then a grammar-book, and a copy of Milton’s ‘Paradise Lost’, and soon was writing his own verses.
In 1852, he walked to London looking for a job on the railways, but quickly returned north to the collieries as a hewer, where his ‘Poems in Morpeth’, published in 1859, brought him to public attention, first in Gateshead, then nationally. Oscar Wilde admired Joseph’s ‘Carols from the Coalfields’; Dante Gabriel Rossetti praised the ‘freshness’ of his shorter verses.
Précis
At seven years of age, Joseph Skipsey began work in the Northumberland coalfields. Deep underground, he taught himself to read and write from scraps of newspapers, and acquired whatever he could of English literature. In 1859 he published his first collection of poems, and eventually attracted the notice of Victorian literary greats including Oscar Wilde and Dante Gabriel Rossetti. (59 / 60 words)
At seven years of age, Joseph Skipsey began work in the Northumberland coalfields. Deep underground, he taught himself to read and write from scraps of newspapers, and acquired whatever he could of English literature. In 1859 he published his first collection of poems, and eventually attracted the notice of Victorian literary greats including Oscar Wilde and Dante Gabriel Rossetti.
Variations: 1.increase the length of this precis to exactly 65 words. 2.reduce the length of this precis to exactly 55 words. 3.introduce one of the following words into the precis: besides, just, must, not, or, since, unless, who.
Word Games
Sevens Based on this passage
Suggest answers to this question. See if you can limit one answer to exactly seven words.
Variations: 1.expand your answer to exactly fourteen words. 2.expand your answer further, to exactly twenty-one words. 3.include one of the following words in your answer: if, but, despite, because, (al)though, unless.
Jigsaws Based on this passage
Express the ideas below in a single sentence, using different words as much as possible. Do not be satisfied with the first answer you think of; think of several, and choose the best.
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