William Barnes

William Barnes, English dialect poet and philologist, born in Dorsetshire in 1800, died 1886. Of humble birth, he first entered a solicitor's office, then taught at a school in Dorchester, and having taken orders became rector of Winterbourne Came in his native county and died there. He acquired a knowledge of many languages, and published works on Anglo-Saxon and English, as An Anglo-Saxon Delectus, A Philological Grammar (grounded upon English), Grammar and Glossary of the Dorset Dialect, &c., but is best known by his Poems of Rural Life in the Dorset Dialect and Poems of Rural Life in Common English.