ABSTRACT
Like so many labouring-class poets of the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries, Shaw had a connection to the trade of shoemaking, indirectly through his father, who practised the craft at Ravensworth in North Yorkshire, where Shaw was born. Shaw received some education, enough to become an usher at both Scorton and then Darlington Grammar School. There he published his first poem, Liberty, dedicated to the Earl of Darlington. Shaw then joined a group of itinerant players, the Norwich Company of Comedians. He published his second poem, Ode on the Four Seasons, from Bury St. Edmunds in 1760. Both poems received scant notice. In 1761 he performed in London, though he was reputed to have been an indifferent actor. His third poem, The Four Farthing Candle, a satire, was an assault on his fellow poets Charles Churchill, Robert Lloyd, George Colman and James Shirley and received very scornful reviews, as did the first edition of The Race.
