Author: Gray, Thomas
Biography:
Gray, Thomas (1716-71: ODNB)
A mid-century poet, best known for the Elegy, Written in a Country Church-Yard of 1751, he owes his inclusion in this bibliography mainly to the posthumous appearance of poems that Gray himself had chosen not to publish, in Poems of Mr. Gray, to which are prefixed Memoirs of his Life and Writings (1775), edited by his friend and executor William Mason (q.v.). Gray was the only one of twelve children of Philip and Dorothy (Antrobus) Gray to survive infancy. His father was a scrivener, his mother a milliner. Born in London, he attended Eton College and then entered Peterhouse College, Cambridge, in 1734, though he did not immediately proceed to a degree because he was also entered at the Inns of Court to study law. From 1739 to 1741 he travelled on the Continent with Horace Walpole, a friend from Eton. After the death of his father in 1741, improved financial circumstances allowed him to live the life of an independent scholar, mainly at Cambridge--initially at Peterhouse and then at Pembroke College. He was granted an LLB in 1743 and from 1768 to 1771 held the chair of Modern History. With encouragement from Walpole, he published some of his poems anonymously in the 1740s. Publication of the Elegy was partly forced by the threat of unauthorized printing. As his name became known and his reputation grew, other titles followed, with Dodsley or Walpole's Strawberry Hill Press as the publishers, culminating in the collected Poems of Mr. Gray in 1768. He died in his rooms at Pembroke and was buried with his mother at Stoke Poges. (ODNB 12 Jan. 2019)
Other Names:
- Gray
- Mr. [Thomas] Gray