Apart from his abusive father, another vital factor in TG
's life was his homosexuality, which has been freely discussed by scholars only fairly recently. This informed his early friendships with Richard West
and Horace Walpole
Friends, Associates
Thomas Gray
The death of an even closer friend, Richard West
, in 1742 evoked a plangent sonnet from Gray and seems to have been the major impetus behind his period of greatest poetic creativity.
Timeline
30 May 1747: Thomas Gray published Ode on a Distant Prospect...
Foxon, David F. English Verse 1701-1750. Cambridge University Press, 1975, 2 vols.
1775: The first, posthumous, printing of Thomas...
Writing climate item
1775
The first, posthumous, printing of Thomas Gray
's sonnet on the death of Richard West
caused a literary sensation; it laid the foundation for Charlotte Smith
's Elegiac Sonnets, 1784, and the revival of the sonnet form.
Curran, Stuart. “Reading with Both Hands: The Dialog of Novelist and Poet”. American Society for Eighteenth-Century Studies (ASECS) Conference, Boston, MA, 27 Mar. 2004.
