Author: Bowles, William Lisle
Biography:
BOWLES, William Lisle (1762-1850: ODNB)
pseudonym the late Dr. Archibald Macleod
Clergyman, poet, critic, and antiquary. Son of a clergyman, he attended Winchester School (where his master was Joseph Warton) and Trinity College, Oxford (where Thomas Warton, the professor of poetry, was a fellow). He was ordained and eventually became vicar of Bremhill in Wiltshire, where he lived most of his life. He married Magdalene Wake in 1797. His Fourteen Sonnets (1789) was an immediate success, and his vein of melancholy reflective landscape verse influenced the next generation of poets. (Coleridge, q.v., in Biographia Literaria, recalls copying out the sonnets as gifts for friends when he was a schoolboy.) After 1800 he concentrated more on long poems, The Missionary being one of them. His 10-volume edition of Pope drew him into controversy with Byron (q.v.) in 1821. (ODNB 21 Dec. 2017) HJ
Other Names:
- Rev. W. L. Bowles
- Rev. W. Lisle Bowles
- Rev. William Lisle Bowles
- Rev. Wm. Lisle Bowles
- W. L. Bowles
- W. Lisle Bowles
- Wm. Lisle Bowles
- [W. L.] Bowles