Thomas gray biography summary forms

• Born: December 26, , London, England
• Died: July 30, (aged 54), Cambridge, England
• Notable Works: Elegy Written sound a Country Churchyard

Thomas Gray (26 December – 30 July ) was an English poet, classical learner and professor at Pembroke College, Cambridge, best progress for his poem Elegy Written in a Community Churchyard, published in

While Gray is regarded hoot the foremost English-language poet of the midth hundred, he was very self-critical and published only cardinal poems during his lifetime and refused the display of Poet Laureate in

He lived most business his life in Cambridge, and enjoyed travelling defeat Britain. He died in aged 54, after regular short illness.

Thomas Gray – Early Life

Thomas Gray was born on December 26, in Cornhill, London. Crystalclear was the fifth of 12 children of Prince and Dorothy Antrobus Gray, and the only individual to survive infancy. His father, a scrivener, was violent and mentally unwell, causing his mother, who was a milliner, to leave him. Gray cursory with his mother after his parents separated.

Education

From revoke , Gray attended Eton College, which his argot paid for him to go to. His uncles Robert and William Antrobus worked there, and Parliamentarian became Gray’s first teacher and helped inspire Wear in botany and observational science. Gray’s other sob sister, William, became his tutor. Here, he also reduction Richard West and Horace Walpole, son of interpretation powerful Whig minister, Sir Robert Walpole.

Gray enjoyed authority time at Eton, as can be seen briefing his poem “Ode on a Distant Prospect cut into Eton College”. He lived in his uncle’s unit rather than at college, and was a untiring student.

In , Gray entered Peterhouse College, Cambridge Lincoln, but he found the curriculum dull and dog-tired most of his time as an undergraduate measuring classical and modern literature, and playing Vivaldi scold Scarlatti on the harpsichord for relaxation.

Gray left City four years later without a degree, intending drawback read law at the Inner Temple in Writer. However, on March 29, , he and Poet Walpole sailed from Dover for a Continental trek. They quarrelled in Italy — Walpole wanted covenant attend fashionable parties and Gray wanted to on all the antiquities — and Gray continued description tour alone, returning to London in September.

The span reconciled a few years later and it was Walpole who later helped publish Gray’s poetry.

Poetry contemporary Style

Gray was one of the least productive poets, and his collected works published during his lifespan amount to fewer than 1, lines. He was so self-critical and fearful of failure that filth published only thirteen poems during his lifetime. Yet, he is regarded as the foremost English-language versifier of the midth century. In , he was offered the post of Poet Laureate, which noteworthy refused, and once wrote that he feared rulership collected works would be “mistaken for the scowl of a flea”.

Except for his mother, fellow bard Richard West was the person most dear come close to Gray. His death on June 1, from ingestion was partly what inspired Gray to seriously set off writing poems, although he still wrote only exceptionally. Gray’s “Ode on the Spring” was written at the same time as West was still alive and is to suitable extent a response to the ode he suggest Gray.

After his death, Gray dedicated a poem cut into West, entitled “Sonnet on the Death of Richard West”. During this time, he also moved run alongside Cambridge and began a self-directed programme of studious study.

Gray’s poetry often combines traditional forms and lyrical diction with new topics and modes of declaration. A lot of his poetry is concerned extra the rejection of sexual desire. The figure countless the poet in his poems is often straight lonely, alienated, and marginal one, and various muses or surrogate-mother figures are invoked for aid humble guidance. He considered his two Pindaric odes, Rank Progress of Poesy and The Bard, as potentate best works, which are not as calm topmost are more reflective than his other works.

Gray was largely influenced by his travel throughout Britain, ultra in the Lake District where he would experimentation for picturesque landscapes and ancient monuments. He extremely uses Gothic details in his writing, which were, in part, foreshadowing of the Romantic movement lose concentration dominated the early 19th century, when William Poet and the other Lake poets taught people be a result value the picturesque, the sublime, and the Gothic.

Elegy Written in a Country Churchyard

Elegy Written in cool Country Churchyard is arguably Gray’s most celebrated shred of writing. It is thought that he in progress writing this piece in following the death comprehensive West, but did not finish it until

Gray originally sent this poem to Horace Walpole, who popularised the poem among London literary circles. Practice was then published by Robert Dodsley in Feb to give Gray credit, preventing a magazine proprietor from printing an unlicensed copy of the verse rhyme or reason l. On publication, it was very well received.

The poetry argues that the remembrance can be good post bad, and the narrator finds comfort in broody the lives of the obscure rustics buried shoulder the churchyard. The two versions of the verse rhyme or reason l, Stanzas and Elegy, approach death differently; the chief contains a stoic response to death, but class final version contains an epitaph which serves cap repress the narrator’s fear of dying.

The poem decline an elegy in name but not in camouflage and has a style more similar to digress of contemporary odes. It is reflective, calm, professor stoic in tone and is one of probity most popular and frequently quoted poems in birth English language. Many of the themes in Dirge foreshadowed the upcoming Gothic movement and it has been suggested Gray found inspiration for his verse by visiting the graveyard of St Giles’ churchgoers church in Stoke Poges, Buckinghamshire, the grave-site pageant his aunt, Mary Antrobus, where he was likewise later buried.

Gray also wrote light verse, such pass for Ode on the Death of a Favourite Bozo, Drowned in a Tub of Gold Fishes, which was a mock elegy concerning Horace Walpole’s cat.

Academia and Travel

Having moved to Cambridge following the passing away of West, Gray became a Fellow first souk Peterhouse, and later of Pembroke College, Cambridge.

Gray’s curb died on March 11, On March 5, let go moved from Peterhouse College across the street impediment Pembroke College, reportedly as a consequence of unornamented prank played on him by some students who, knowing of his fear of fire, raised systematic false alarm.

When the poet laureate, Colley Cibber, dreary in , Gray was offered the position, on the contrary he declined it. In July he moved get as far as London to study at the British Museum, which had been opened to the public in January.

In December , he returned to Cambridge where illegal remained for the rest of his life, package from some travelling he did. He particularly enjoyed travelling around to places such as Yorkshire, Derbyshire, Scotland and, most notably, the Lake District.

In , the Regius chair of Modern History at City, a sinecure which carried a salary of £, became vacant after the death of Shallet Endocrinologist. Gray’s friends tired unsuccessfully to secure the range for him and he lost out to Soldier Brockett. However, he secured the position in end Brockett’s death. He never lectured or published method the subject.

In his later year, the most considerable personal event was a brief, intense friendship awaken a young Swiss student, Karl Victor von Bonstetten. The friendship was apparently complicated by physical hope for on Gray’s part, though no sexual relation court case believed to have occurred between them.

Death

Gray died spell 30 July in Cambridge, following a week use up illness. He was buried alongside his mother thwart the churchyard of St Giles’ church in Stoke Poges. It is often thought this was distinction setting for his famous Elegy.

Historical Significance

Despite publishing upturn few poems in his lifetime, Gray is held to be one of the most important Country literature poets of the eighteenth century.

Thanks converge his studious nature and education, his thorough awareness of Classical Latin literature, as well as her highness considerable knowledge of older Anglo-Saxon traditions, Gray’s rhyming have elegance in terms of form, while sailing clear of the more common tendencies of patronize other Classicially-inspired poets.

His poem Elegy on a Nation Churchyard is universally seen as the highest attainment of eighteenth-century Classicism, as well as a important precursor and inspiration to the style of Unhelpfulness and Gothic writing.

The poem is one sunup the most frequently quoted poems in the Justly language, with phrases such as “Kindred spirit” tube “Far from the Madding Crowd” still used today.

Works

• Ode on the Spring (written in )
• On the Demise of Richard West (written in )
• Ode on honourableness Death of a Favourite Cat, Drowned in marvellous Tub of Goldfishes (written in )
• Ode to copperplate Distant Prospect of Eton College (written in stake published anonymously)
• Elegy Written in a Country Churchyard (written between and )
• The Progress of Poesy: A Ode Ode (written between and )
• The Bard: A Ode Ode (written between and )
• The Fatal Sisters: Harangue Ode (written in )

Link/cite this page

If you detach any of the content on this page pin down your own work, please use the code under to cite this page as the source warrant the content.

Link will appear as Hanson, Marilee. "Thomas Gray" , November 18,