For the Australian poet, see John Blight

John Blight

John Blight was an Australian poet. The name Blight is of Cornish origin.-Biography:Born in Unley, South Australia on 30 July 1913, Blight was educated at Brisbane State High School. During the Great Depression in Australia he tramped the Queensland coast looking for work...

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John Thomas Blight FSA

Society of Antiquaries of London

The Society of Antiquaries of London is a learned society "charged by its Royal Charter of 1751 with 'the encouragement, advancement and furtherance of the study and knowledge of the antiquities and history of this and other countries'." It is based at Burlington House, Piccadilly, London , and is...

 (7 October 1835 – 23 January 1911) was a Cornish

Cornish people

The Cornish are a people associated with Cornwall, a county and Duchy in the south-west of the United Kingdom that is seen in some respects as distinct from England, having more in common with the other Celtic parts of the United Kingdom such as Wales, as well as with other Celtic nations in Europe...

 archaeological artist born near Redruth

Redruth

Redruth is a town and civil parish traditionally in the Penwith Hundred in Cornwall, United Kingdom. It has a population of 12,352. Redruth lies approximately at the junction of the A393 and A3047 roads, on the route of the old London to Land's End trunk road , and is approximately west of...

 in Cornwall

Cornwall

Cornwall is a unitary authority and ceremonial county of England, within the United Kingdom. It is bordered to the north and west by the Celtic Sea, to the south by the English Channel, and to the east by the county of Devon, over the River Tamar. Cornwall has a population of , and covers an area of...

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His father, Robert, a teacher, moved the family to Penzance

Penzance

Penzance is a town, civil parish, and port in Cornwall, England, in the United Kingdom. It is the most westerly major town in Cornwall and is approximately 75 miles west of Plymouth and 300 miles west-southwest of London...

 and introduced his sons to the study of nature, antiquities and folk lore. John Blight was a natural draughtsman. By the age of 20, Blight had published a book on the antiquities of Penwith

Penwith

Penwith was a local government district in Cornwall, England, United Kingdom, whose council was based in Penzance. The district covered all of the Penwith peninsula, the toe-like promontory of land at the western end of Cornwall and which included an area of land to the east that fell outside the...

 and a large collection of drawings.

His expansion of this work, in two volumes, was at first encouraged by Rev. R. S. Hawker

Robert Stephen Hawker

Robert Stephen Hawker was an Anglican priest, poet, antiquarian of Cornwall and reputed eccentric. He is best known as the writer of The Song of the Western Men with its chorus line of And shall Trelawny die? / Here's twenty thousand Cornish men / will know the reason why!, which he published...

 and then the cause of a great quarrel. John Blight's second patron, James Halliwell

James Orchard Halliwell-Phillipps

James Orchard Halliwell-Phillipps was an English Shakespearean scholar, and a collector of English Nursery Rhymes and Fairy Tales....

, was similarly unhelpful, never paying him for his vast labour in illustrating Halliwell's projected edition of William Shakespeare

William Shakespeare

William Shakespeare was an English poet and playwright, widely regarded as the greatest writer in the English language and the world's pre-eminent dramatist. He is often called England's national poet and the "Bard of Avon"...

's Works.

In the mid-1860s, Blight had a mental breakdown and was incarcerated for the remainder of his life in Bodmin

Bodmin

Bodmin is a civil parish and major town in Cornwall, England, United Kingdom. It is situated in the centre of the county southwest of Bodmin Moor.The extent of the civil parish corresponds fairly closely to that of the town so is mostly urban in character...

Lunatic Asylum. Blight's recording of Cornish antiquities includes many that no longer exist. His descriptions and illustrations of them provide a most valuable source for archaeologists and local historians.

Major works

• Ancient Crosses and Other Antiquities in the East of Cornwall 3rd ed. (1872)
• Ancient Crosses and Other Antiquities in the West of Cornwall (1856), 2nd edition 1858. (3rd ed. Penzance: W. Cornish, 1872) (facsimile ed. reproducing 1856 ed.: Blight's Cornish Crosses; Penzance : Oakmagic Publications, 1997)
• A Week at the Land's End (1861) (Facsimile ed. of 2nd ed published Truro: Lake and Lake, 1876: Alison Hodge, 1989)

Further reading

• Bates, Selina & Spurgin, Keith (2006) Dust of Heroes: the life of Cornish artist, archaeologist and writer John Thomas Blight 1836-1911. Truro: Windowbox Books ISBN 978-0-955304-07; 978-0-955304-14 (pbk)