John Holland (poet)

Sheffield Manor had fallen into decay even in John Holland's day. A plate from Joseph Hunter's Hallamshire, The History and Topography of the Parish of Sheffield (1819)

Holland was born in a cottage in the grounds of the ancient Sheffield Manor in Yorkshire and initially trained by his father to follow him as a maker of optical instruments. However, he was a bookish young man, who taught himself Latin and soon began publishing his own poems. These eventually brought him to the notice of a local poet, James Montgomery, editor of the Sheffield Iris, who published both articles and poems of his in the paper, although commenting on the latter's "inaccuracies and imperfections" and remarking that "they would be twice as good if they were as short again." By 1813 Holland had become a Sunday School teacher and turned his hand to composing religious poetry and hymns. Some five years later he was appointed as a secretary of the Sheffield Sunday School Union.

In 1825, Holland was appointed as editor of the Sheffield Iris by a new owner, John Blackwell. In 1832, he moved to Northumberland to edit the Newcastle Courant, which Blackwell had bought, but returned to Sheffield in the new year and was elected curator of the Sheffield Literary and Philosophical Society, a position he held until his death. In 1835 he became co-editor of the Sheffield Mercury, serving until the paper was closed down by its new owner in 1848. Throughout his journalistic life, he wrote numerous works on botany, geology, local history and topography, in addition to biographies and sermons.[1]

In 1819 Holland wrote a long topographical poem on Sheffield Park and sent it to Montgomery for corrections and suggestions. Previously his output had largely been anonymous or appeared under his initials; the poem now became the first book published under his name and was followed by another in 1821 on the "plague village" of Eyam. That year he also published a narrative poem, "The Cottage of Pella", in imitation of Montgomery's "The Wanderer of Switzerland". Another strong influence on him was the poet Thomas Campbell. Holland's poem "The Rainbow" (1820), published at the same time as one on the same subject by Campbell, was as frequently anthologised as the latter's.[2] Holland then took Campbell's The Pleasures of Hope as a model for his own The Hopes of Matrimony (1822). As well as later productions, a good deal of poetry was included in some prose works, such as the serialised The Old Arm Chair (1823),[3] his botanical work Memoirs of the Rose (1824),[4] and his consideration of the Crucifixion, Cruciana (1836). Since he continued to write at length on all occasions, much of his work is derivative and diffuse.

In 1827, Holland published a book with an unusually long title (Crispin anecdotes: comprising interesting notices of shoemakers....[5] This was a compendium of many elements, including the history of shoes, the writings of shoemakers, and a survey of the manufacture, etc of shoes.

In 1835 came The History and Description of Fossil Fuel, The Collieries and Coal Trade of Great Britain. Its title page further identifies him as the author of the Treatise on Manufactures in Metal, which is said to be in three volumes, as part of Dionysius Lardner's Cabinet Cyclopaedia (1830–1844).

The coal trade book is an erudite, but readable, comprehensive survey of many aspects of the coal industry up to 1835, running to 478 pages. In the preface he confesses he is "neither a Geologist, a Collier, nor a Coal Merchant...", and prays for the reader's indulgence, until a more qualified author can undertake a similar survey. Despite this self-deprecation, the work is an extraordinary compendium of knowledge and information.