Alexander Bald

Alexander Bald (9 June 1783 - 21 October 1859) was a poet.

Bald was a poet and frequent contributor to The Scots Magazine. As the ‘father’ of the ‘Shakespeare Club of Alloa’, he became a friend and correspondent with the poets James Hogg (the club’s ‘laureate’, who wrote Ode to the Genius of Shakespeare for the club) and John Grieve (who introduced Hogg to Bald in 1803),[1][2] and the housepainter-poet John Crawford.[3] Hogg's poem The Good Man of Alloa was composed while visiting Bald at his home[4] and he features in Hogg's story Some Passages in the Life of Colonel Cloud that featured in Blackwood's Magazine in 1825.[5] In the story, Colonel Cloud travels with the narrator to the annual Shakespeare Festival at Alloa, there they meet ‘Mr Alexander Bald’.[6]

After working as the agent for the Alloa Colliery, Bald ran the Alloa Brick and Tile Works from 1814.[7] His two best known poems feature in The Modern Scottish Minstrel, Volume V. by Charles Rogers (1857) and three others are found in The Poets of Clackmannanshire by James Beveridge (1885). Alexander Bald was the brother of Robert Bald, the engineer.

Bibliography
  • The Modern Scottish Minstrel, by Charles Rogers
  • The Clackmannanshire Poets, by James Beveridge.
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References
  1. The Collected Letters of James Hogg, p.443, 2004, Edinburgh University Press ISBN 0-7486-1671-3
  2. Hogg, James. Mack, Douglas S and Hughes, Gillian (1995). The collected works of James Hogg - Volume 1. p.495. Edinburgh University Press.
  3. Crawford, John (1874). Memorials of the Town and Parish of Alloa. p.III. J. Lothian.
  4. The Good Man of Alloa was published in A Queer Book (1832). 21 October 1859. Sterling Observer. Death of Alexander Bald.
  5. ‘Some Passages in the Life of Colonel Cloud' Blackwoods Edinburgh Magazine, Vol. XVIII, July - December 1825
  6. 'The Genesis of ‘Gil-Martin’: James Hogg, ‘Colonel Cloud’, and ‘The Madman in the Mercury’' - David Groves, Notes and Queries, Volume 52, Number 4, December 2005, OUP
  7. 8 October 1814. Caledonian Mercury.
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