At home her mother had read to her daughters, while they sewed, Greek and Roman history, and writers like Pope
, and Cowper
. At four Anna could recite long passages from Milton
's L'Allegro...
Education
Zora Neale Hurston
She also worked at the beginnings of her education. When she happened upon Milton
's Paradise Lost she devoured it, and she learned Gray
's Elegy in a Country Churchyard by heart in the course...
Family and Intimate relationships
Sarah Scott
William, baptised in 1727, became a clergyman and a friend of the poet Thomas Gray
.
Rizzo, Betty, and Sarah Scott. “Introduction”. The History of Sir George Ellison, University Press of Kentucky, p. ix - xlv.
ix, x
Friends, Associates
Cecil Frances Alexander
The writers whom CFA
most admired during her childhood were Scott
, Gray
, and, to a lesser extent, Wordsworth
and Byron
.
Alexander, Cecil Frances. “Preface”. Poems, edited by William Alexander, Macmillan, p. v - xxix.
As well as her central allusion to Barbauld, AG
claims authority for her work by quoting Milton
on her title-page and later as well, and by echoing, in her deliberately derivative, that is traditional style...
Intertextuality and Influence
Christina Rossetti
Her early work and the passages she copied into her mother's commonplace-book show the influence of Tennyson
and Wordsworth
; she also acknowledged the impact of Gray
and Crabbe
, and wrote several poems inspired...
Her non-religious poems show her a confident, versatile, accomplished writer. She casts a net of allusion widely—Milton
, Gray
, Edward Young
. She imitates Pope
on solitude, writes first of James Hervey
's...
Intertextuality and Influence
Anna Letitia Barbauld
It is not true that Corsica was unique as an overtly political poem by a woman (precedents reach from the seventeenth century to Verses on the Present State of Ireland by Margaret Bingham, Countess Lucan
The title poem alludes through its name to Mozart
's Magic Flute. Its protagonist, Catherine, nearly eighteen, is gently mocked for her literary aspirations: Her Poems good, if not surprising, / On Friendship, Death...
Intertextuality and Influence
Frances Browne
FB
began writing at the age of seven, when, inspired by her great and strange love of poetry, she attempted to re-write The Lord's Prayer in verse.
Browne, Frances. The Star of Attéghéi; the Vision of Schwartz; and Other Poems. Edward Moxon.
xvi-xvii
She continued to write throughout her childhood...
Murray then divides her volume into three parts: A Guide to the Lakes . . . and . . . the West Riding of Yorkshire, A Guide to the Beauties of Scotland, and...
Intertextuality and Influence
Catherine Fanshawe
The poems by CF
include an Elegy on the Abrogation of the Birthnight Ball (her lament, in the person of an elderly beau, for the passing of the old-fashioned minuet: an orgy of grandiose parody...
Timeline
30 May 1747: Thomas Gray published Ode on a Distant Prospect...
Writing climate item
30 May 1747
Thomas Gray
published Ode on a Distant Prospect of Eton College.
18 March 1748: Robert Dodsley first offered for sale his...
Writing climate item
18 March 1748
Robert Dodsley
first offered for sale his influential Collection of Poems by Several Hands.
15 February 1751: Thomas Gray published his Elegy Written in...
Writing climate item
15 February 1751
Thomas Gray
published his Elegy Written in a Country Church-yard, to forestall unauthorized publication.
By June 1753: Thomas Gray's Poems were published by Dodsley,...
Writing climate item
By June 1753
Thomas Gray
's Poems were published by Dodsley
, with designs by Richard Bentley
the younger.
8 August 1757: Thomas Gray published his Two Odes (the Pindarics...
Writing climate item
8 August 1757
Thomas Gray
published his Two Odes (the Pindarics The Bard and The Progress of Poesy).
15 January 1759: The British Museum (including what had formerly...
Building item
15 January 1759
The British Museum
(including what had formerly been known as the King's Library
), established six years earlier, was first opened to the public.
22 September 1761: King George III and Queen Charlotte were...
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.
Texts
Gray, Thomas, and Herbert Willmarth Starr. Correspondence. Editors Toynbee, Paget and Leonard Whibley, Clarendon Press, 1971.
Gray, Thomas, and Herbert Willmarth Starr. Correspondence. Editors Toynbee, Paget and Leonard Whibley, Clarendon Press, 1971.
Gray, Thomas, and William Collins. “Introduction”. Thomas Gray and William Collins: Poetical Works, edited by Roger Lonsdale, Oxford University Press, 1977, pp. 9-13.
Gray, Thomas, and William Collins. “Introduction”. Thomas Gray and William Collins: Poetical Works, edited by Roger Lonsdale, Oxford University Press, 1977, pp. 9-13.
Gray, Thomas, and William Collins. “Introductions”. Selected Poems of Thomas Gray and William Collins, edited by Arthur Johnson, Edward Arnold, 1967, pp. 9 - 14, 121.
Matthisson, Frederick, and Thomas Gray. Letters Written from Various Parts of the Continent. Translator Plumptre, Anne, T.N. Longman and O. Rees, 1799.
Gray, Thomas, and William Collins. Thomas Gray and William Collins: Poetical Works. Editor Lonsdale, Roger, Oxford University Press, 1977.
