William Barnes was born in 1801 near Sturminster Newton in Dorset, of a farming family. He learned Greek, Latin and Music, taught himself wood-engraving, and in 1823 became a schoolmaster in Mere. He was deeply interested in grammar and language, and waged a lifelong campaign to rid English of classical and foreign influences. He was ordained in 1848. Among his best-known books of poetry are ''Poems of Rural Life in the Dorset Dialect'' (1844) and ''Hwomely Rhymes'' (1859); his work was greatly admired by Thomas Hardy, Tennyson and Hopkins. His work has often been praised for its evocations of Dorset life, landscape and customs; he also wrote political poems of great power and was a master elegist. Barnes died in 1886.