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First page of Dodsley's illustrated edition of Gray's Elegy with illustration by Richard Bentley. Elegy Written in a Country Churchyard is a poem by Thomas Gray, completed in 1750 and first published in 1751. [1] The poem's origins are unknown, but it was partly inspired by Gray's thoughts following the death of the poet Richard West in 1742.
He is widely known for his Elegy Written in a Country Churchyard, published in 1751. [1] Gray was a self-critical writer who published only 13 poems in his lifetime, despite being very popular. He was even offered the position of Poet Laureate in 1757 after the death of Colley Cibber, though he declined. [2]
Some say the best known elegy in English is "Elegy Written in a Country Churchyard," by Thomas Gray, a well-known English poet. This elegy discusses the actual condition of death, not just the death of a single individual. John Milton’s "Lycidas," considered the most famous pastoral elegy, mourns the death of the poet’s good friend Edward King.
At its narrowest, the term "Graveyard School" refers to four poems: Thomas Gray's "Elegy Written in a Country Churchyard", Thomas Parnell's "Night-Piece on Death", Robert Blair's The Grave and Edward Young's Night-Thoughts. At its broadest, it can describe a host of poetry and prose works popular in the early and mid-eighteenth century.
Thomas Gray was a regular visitor to Stoke Poges, which was home to his mother and an aunt, [75] and the churchyard at St Giles is reputed to have been the inspiration for his Elegy Written in a Country Churchyard, though this is not universally accepted. [76]
In 1751, Thomas Gray published "Elegy Written in a Country Churchyard", composed in the heroic stanza.Written in iambic pentameter, the poem followed the same metrical and structural patterns seen in Annus Mirabilis, but the use of the poetic form in an elegy gave it the title of the "elegiac decasyllabic quatrain". [3]
The text of the entry was: Did you know ... that Thomas Gray tried to prevent the publication of Elegy Written in a Country Churchyard and asked that his name be removed from the published version, but it is now considered "the best-known and best-loved poem in English"?
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