Author: Parnell, Thomas
Biography:
PARNELL, Thomas (1679-1718: ODNB)
A close friend of Swift and Pope (qq.v.), Parnell is like them a “prior” author (most if not all of his writings published before 1770) who owes his place in this bibliography to anthologies and other collections that linked him to more nearly contemporary poets such as Beattie and Goldsmith (qq.v.). He was born in Dublin and baptised at St. Catherine’s on 14 Sept. 1679, the son of Anna (Grice) and Thomas Parnell. Educated at Trinity College, Dublin (BA 1697, MA 1700, BD and DD University of Dublin 1712), he was ordained deacon in 1700 and priest in 1704. In 1706 he was made archdeacon of Clogher. He met Swift at St. Patrick’s Cathedral where both held minor clerical roles in 1704. At a date unknown, about 1707, he married Anne Minchin of Tipperary; the couple had three children, only one of whom survived their father. His wife’s death in 1711 was the occasion of Parnell’s well known “Night-Piece on Death.” He afterwards spent more time in congenial literary and political circles in London, contributed essays to the Spectator and the Guardian, and was involved along with Swift, Pope, Gay, and others in the Scriblerus Club. He returned to Ireland in 1714 and was promoted to the vicarage of Finglas in 1716. On his way home from a visit to London in 1718, however, he fell ill and died at Chester on 24 Oct. and was buried in the churchyard of Holy Trinity. Pope undertook the preparation of his poems for the press and dedicated the volume to the Tory leader Robert Harley, earl of Oxford. That collection, Poems on Several Occasions (1722), supplemented by a Glasgow edition of Works in Prose and Verse (1755) that added seven poems and a London edition of Posthumous Works (1758) containing several poems published for the first time from manuscript completed the corpus of Parnell’s works before 1770.There was no further expansion until 1989, when Rawson and Lock added 67 new English poems, seven fragments, and ten Latin poems. (ODNB 19 Aug. 2023; findmypast.com 19 Aug. 2023; C. Rawson and F. P. Lock, eds. Collected Poems of Thomas Parnell [1989])
Other Names:
- Dr. Parnell
- Parnell
- T. Parnell