A Lost Sonnet by H. D. Rawnsley?

Abstract

Canon Hardwicke Drummond Rawnsley, together with Octavia Hill and Robert Hunter, was a founder of the British National Trust. He became a major force for the preservation of heritage, some of his contemporaries arguing that he neglected his ecclesiastical duties (for thirty-four years, he was Canon of Carlisle1) in order to save diverse cultural materials. Encounters with objects, places, and people, he fashioned into essays that allowed him to express opinions on a wide variety of subjects. Things literary, archaeological, topographical, socio-historical, folkloric, biographical, and numerous other interests attracted his curiosity and industry. He was especially keen to capture and record stories he collected from all parts of English Lakeland culture, preserving these in his numerous books. In fact, he was an oral historian who attempted to record with a pencil the accent and inflection of living voices, long before the invention of acoustic and later, electronic portable sound recording equipment.