Don't worry, not many other people have heard of this obscure Romantic poet either, but he merits recognition here, for in 1810 he published one of the earliest original vampire poems in English, titled, aptly enough, "The Vampyre."
Stagg was born near Carlisle, near the Lake Country made famous by the Wordsworths and STC. He lived for a time in Wigton, in northern England, where he ran "Stagg's Circulating Library." Stagg published his first volume, Miscellaneous Poems, in 1790 (it was reprinted in 1804 and 1807), and in 1810 he published Minstrel of the North, which included his vampire poem. He published another collection, The Cumberland Minstrel: Being a Poetical Miscellany of Legendary, Gothic, and Romantic Tales in 1821. Stagg, who spent most of his adult life in Manchester, was known as "The Blind Bard" or "The Blind Bard of Wigton"; a childhood accident left him permanently sightless.
