Ebenezer Elliott, English Poet

Ebenezer Elliott, English poet, known as the 'Corn-law Rhymer', was born in 1781 near Rotherham, Yorkshire, and died in 1849. At the age of seventeen he published his first poem, The Vernal Walk, which was soon followed by others. In 1829 The Village Patriarch, the best of Elliott's longer pieces, was published.

From 1831 to 1837 he carried on business as an iron merchant in Sheffield. His Corn-law Rhymes, periodically contributed to a local paper devoted to the repeal of these laws, attracted attention, and were afterwards collected and published with a longer poem entitled The Ranter. Commercial losses compelled him in 1837 to contract his business, and in 1841 he retired from it altogether. In 1850 two posthumous volumes appeared, entitled More Prose and Verse by the Corn-law Rhymer.