William+Allingham



===William Allingham, 1824-1889 **Nationality:** English **Date of Birth:** 19 March 1824 **Place of Birth:** Ballyshannon, County **Date of Death:** 18 November 1889 **Place of Death:** Eldon House, Lyndhurst Road,=== ===William Allingham was an Irish poet and civil servant. His father was a shipping merchant. The eldest of five children, his mother died when he was aged nine. Allingham married the watercolourist Helen Paterson in 1874. He began his career aged fourteen, working in a bank but quit in 1846 to join the Customs Office. Visiting London in 1847, he became acquainted with the poet Leigh Hunt and in 1849 with Coventry Patmore. In 1850 his first book of poems was dedicated to Leigh Hunt.From 1850-53 he became friends with Thomas Carlyle, Alfred Tennyson, Dante Gabriel Rossetti and the other members of the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood. His chief correspondents throughout his life were Rossetti and Henry Sutton, a young poet journalist in Nottingham.===