Conclusion

Beyond his influence as Ulster’s first labouring-class poetic success, Samuel Thomson’s decision to form a coterie of poets had far-reaching effects beyond his own lifetime, setting in motion a tradition of Ulster poetry which intersected with the powerful literary salons of the day, not least through the prolific figures of James Orr, William Hamilton Drummond and Robert Anderson, each of whom were read outside of Ireland and whose verses were known by their celebrated contemporaries in Scotland and Ireland such as Scott, Wordsworth and Southey. Within Ulster, a second generation of poets like Thomas Beggs, Joseph Carson, Robert Huddleston and David Herbison looked to Thomson, M’Kenzie and Orr as the founders of a distinctive northern school of poetry which preserved the Dissenting character of Ulster as a province. As Ulster’s first ‘labouring-class’ poetic success, Samuel Thomson remains a central and influential figure; both as an individual poet who inspired others to follow his example, and as the instigator of a coterie which played a leading role in the definition of northern Irish, and later Ulster, Romantic literary culture. In his imaginative creations, drawing on Scottish, English and Irish literary traditions, Thomson captured the uniqueness of Ulster’s landscape, inhabitants, and, crucially, the political and theological events that shaped its contemporary state.