Ebenezer Elliott (1781-1849) is best known in literary history as the self-styled Corn Law Rhymer because of his savage satirical poems published in the 1830s. With detailed introduction and explanatory notes, this work is intended to bring Elliott's work into the public domain, directed at both students of the period and the general reader.

Examining how labouring-class poets constructed themselves and were constructed by critics as part of a canon, and how they situated their work in relation to contemporaries and poets from earlier periods, this book highlights the complexities of labouring-class poetic identities in the period from Burns to mid-late century Victorian dialect poets.