Thomas Gray
1716–1771 · English poet and scholar, author of Elegy Written in a Country Churchyard.
Thomas Gray was born in London in 1716. He was the only one of twelve children in his family to survive infancy. His father was a scrivener and his mother a milliner. At Eton College he formed close friendships with Horace Walpole and Richard West. He went on to Peterhouse, Cambridge. In 1738 he joined Walpole on a Grand Tour of Europe, but the two fell out and parted in Tuscany. He spent most of the rest of his life in Cambridge as a scholar and published few poems. His most famous poem, 'Elegy Written in a Country Churchyard' (1751), reflects on the lives of the ordinary villagers buried in a country graveyard and became one of the most quoted poems in English. He also wrote odes and a comic poem about the death of Walpole's cat, drowned in a tub of goldfish. In 1757 he declined the post of Poet Laureate. In 1768 he gained the Regius chair of Modern History at Cambridge. He died in Cambridge in 1771.
Thomas Gray is also an author in the library: author page and works.
Faith: Faith not well documented. Source: Wikipedia
Key dates
- 1716 Born in London
- 1738 Grand Tour with Horace Walpole
- 1751 Elegy Written in a Country Churchyard published
- 1757 Declines the post of Poet Laureate
- 1768 Professor of Modern History at Cambridge
- 1771 Dies in Cambridge
Fun facts
- He wrote a funny mock-serious poem, Ode on the Death of a Favourite Cat, Drowned in a Tub of Gold Fishes, about his friend Horace Walpole's cat. (Source: Thomas Gray (Wikipedia))
Read about them
Grades 9–12
- Elegy Written in a Country Churchyard · In the library
More lives
William Blake · James Boswell · Robert Burns · William Cowper · John Dickinson · Denis Diderot