A research piece on Eliza COOK, associated with the PERRY family.
>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>
Eliza Cook
(24 December 1818 – 23 September 1889) was an English
author, Chartist poet and writer born in London Road, Southwark.
She was the daughter of a local tradesman. She attended the
local Sunday Schools and was encouraged by the son of the music master to
produce her first volume of poetry. From this she took confidence and in 1837
began to offer verse to the radical Weekly Dispatch, then edited by William
Johnson Fox. She was a staple of its pages for the next ten years. She also
offered material to The Literary Gazette, Metropolitan Magazine and New
Monthly. [1]
Her work for the Dispatch and New Monthly was later pirated
by George Julian Harney, the Chartist, for the Northern Star. Familiar with the
London Chartist movement, in its various sects, she followed many of the older
radicals in disagreeing with the O'Brienites and O'Connorites in their
disregard for repeal of the Corn Laws. She also preferred the older Radicals'
path of Friendly Societies and self-education.
In 1835 while only seventeen years of age she published her
first volume titled Lays of a Wild Harp. In 1838 she published Melaia and other
Poems, and from 1849 to 1854 wrote, edited, and published Eliza Cook's Journal,
a weekly periodical she described as one of "utility and amusement."
Cook also published Jottings from my Journal (1860), and New Echoes (1864); and
in 1863 she was given a Civil List pension income of £100 a year.
Her poem The Old Armchair (1838) made hers a household name
for a generation, both in England and in America. Cook was a proponent of
political and sexual freedom for women, and believed in the ideology of
self-improvement through education, something she called "levelling
up." This made her great favourite with the working-class public. Her works
became a staple of anthologies throughout the century. She died in Wimbledon.