James Arbuckle

Richard Holmes (University of East Anglia)

Ed. by Ian Campbell Ross, Trinity College Dublin
The Literary Encyclopedia. Volume 1.2.4: Irish Writing and Culture, 400-present.
Vol. editors: Paul Delaney (Trinity College Dublin), Anne Markey (Dublin City University), Ian Campbell Ross (Trinity College Dublin), Sinéad Sturgeon (Queen's University Belfast)

Dates

Born c. 1700
Died 1742
Activity 1717-1737

Places

Born in Ireland, Republic of (Eire)
Active in Ireland, Republic of (Eire)

Activities

Primary

Poet

Resources

Arbuckle's Works

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James Arbuckle, Belfast-born poet and essayist, survives in the footnotes of better-known writers: the Scottish poet Allan Ramsay; Francis Hutcheson; and Jonathan Swift, whose work he criticized and parodied with such success that it has often been mistaken for Swift’s own. His neglect is due in part to his ambivalent national identity: not Scottish enough for a Scottish literary tradition that in any case has not much valued its “English” writers; in his native land neither part of Celtic “Hidden Ireland” nor of Yeats’s Anglo-Irish tradition.

Arbuckle was one of a generation of Irish Presbyterians who attended Glasgow University and developed the liberal “New Light” theology. He was at one time a Divinity student but his first published poem, Snuff (1717), announced his

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861 words

Citation: Holmes, Richard. "James Arbuckle". The Literary Encyclopedia. First published 07 December 2007 [https://www.litencyc.com/php/speople.php?rec=true&UID=137, accessed 01 May 2024.]

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