Robert Southey was among the first and most prominent to notice the genius of Henry Kirke White. He wrote a personal letter to encourage the young man after he read an unfavorable review of White's poems in 1804, and he ensured White's prestige when he published The Remains of Henry Kirke White in 1807. This book, which reached a tenth edition by 1823, proved to be immensely popular both in England and America. George Gordon, Lord Byron, who began composing English Bards and Scotch Reviewers (1809) in 1807, included in his poem several lines of praise for White's poetry, and in an 1811 letter to R. C. Dallas he defended White's "Poesy & Genius," acknowledging that there was "a great deal of Cant" in "Harry White" but arguing that it was "sincere" cant and that White's poetry surely put him "beyond all the Bloomfields & Blacketts & their collateral coblers."

Born in the city of Nottingham, Henry...