Susanna Blamire (12 January 1747 – 1794) was an English Romantic poet, sometimes known as 'The Muse of Cumberland' because many of her poems represent rural life in the county and, therefore, provide a valuable contradistinction to those amongst the poems of William Wordsworth that regard the same subject, in addition to those of the other Lake Poets, especially those of Samuel Taylor Coleridge, and in addition to those of Lord Byron, on whose The Prisoner of Chillon her works may have had an influence. Blamire composed much of her poetry outside, sat beside a stream in her garden at Thackwood. She also played the guitar and the flageolet, both of which she used in the process of the composition of her poetry. Blamire has been described as 'unquestionably the greatest female poet of [the Romantic] age' and, by Jonathan Wordsworth, a great-nephew of William Wordsworth, 'as important as the other Romantic poets writing during the eighteenth century'. Blamire's song 'And Ye shall walk in silk attire', referenced by Charles Dickens in The Old Curiosity Shop is well known. Her magnum opus is Stoklewath, or The Cumbrian Village. Life Blamire was born at Cardew Hall, near Cardew, Cumberland, on 12 January 1747. Her parents were William Blamire, a farmer who died in 1758, and Isabella Simpson of Stockdalewath who died in 1753. Left an orphan, she went to live with her mother's sister Mary who farmed at Thackwood, Stockdalewath. She was educated at the Dame school at Raughton Head, before being privately tutored, at home, by masters from the Sebergham Grammar School, where the poet Joseph Relph had been Headmaster. Social milieu Her brother William, who married to a sister of John Christian Curwen was the father of William Blamire, who served as High Sheriff of Cumberland and MP for Cumberland. Another brother, Richard, was a bookseller in London who published many of William Gilpin's work regarding the picturesque. Through these brothers, Susanna was introduced to the London literary milieu. Her sister married Colonel Graham of Gartmore, who was an officer in the Highland regiment, through whom she had contacts in Scotland. Susannah went as her sister's companion on trips to The Scottish Highlands, London and Ireland In Carlisle, Susanna encountered Catharine Gilpin of Scaleby Castle, who became a friend and possibly, according to Mandell Creighton, a co-author in verse. Through another aunt, Mrs Fell, who was a curates wife