James Montgomery: Poetry, protest and prison Hamish Mathison and Adam J Smith
Event details
2021 marks the 250th birthday of James Montgomery, a Sheffield-based poet, radical newspaper editor, hymn-writer, philanthropist and abolitionist who in 1795 was twice imprisoned in York Castle for publishing poems critical of his government.
Join Hamish Mathison of Sheffield University and Adam Smith of York St John University as they reflect on Montgomery’s vast legacies while also asking what his commitments to freedom and fairness can teach readers today.
This event is hosted live on Zoom Webinar. You’ll receive a link to join a couple of days before the event takes place and a reminder an hour before. During the event, you can ask questions via a Q&A function but audience cameras and microphones will remain muted throughout.
Image credit: Wikimedia Commons: Portrait of James Montgomery Esq by Henry Richard Cook, from the Welsh Portrait Collection at the National Library of Wales
About the speakers
Dr Hamish Mathison is a Lecturer in the School of English at Sheffield University, where he researches, among other things, early newspaper history, print culture and patriotic sentiment in 18th-century Britain. In 2016 he co-edited Poetry, Conspiracy and Radicalism, a collection of James Montgomery’s protest poetry. He also directed ˜Sheffield: Print, Protest, Poetry”, an AHRC-funded project resulting in a digital anthology of poems printed in Montgomery’s radical newspaper, The Sheffield Iris.
Dr Adam J Smith is a Senior Lecturer in 18th-century Literature at York St John University, where he researches 18th-century print culture, with a particular interest in satire and protest. In 2016 he co-edited Poetry, Conspiracy and Radicalism, a collection of James Montgomery’s protest poetry. He has also published on Montgomery’s prison writing and, since 2017, curated ˜Words with Wagtails: York Prison Poetry”, an open access digital anthology of Montgomery’s prison poems.
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