Digital Victorian Periodical Poetry

Printer, bookseller, and poet. Pseudonym: The Poet Close. Alternative signature: J. Close. Born in Gunnerside, Swaledale, Yorkshire. Father was a Wesleyan lay preacher and also had a butcher’s shop where Close first worked until 1852, when Close became a printer then bookseller. He sold his poetry from a stall in Bowness-in-Windermere. His Civil List pension was controversial and revoked. Biographical information: Reilly, Mid-Victorian Poetry, pp. 98-9; Goodridge. (AC)