William Cowper

William Cowper was born on 26 November 1731 at Great Berkhamsted, Hertfordshire, where his father was rector. His mother died when he was six. After Westminster School he trained as a lawyer, but in 1763, facing an examination for a clerkship in the House of Lords, he suffered a breakdown and attempted suicide. At Dr Nathaniel Cotton's asylum in St Albans he recovered and underwent an evangelical conversion. He lived afterwards with the Unwin family, settling at Olney with Mary Unwin in 1767, where John Newton was curate; together they wrote the Olney Hymns (1779). Recurring depression, including the conviction that he was damned, troubled him for the rest of his life, yet he wrote cheerful letters, the comic John Gilpin and the long poem The Task (1785). He translated Homer and spoke out against slavery. He died at East Dereham, Norfolk, on 25 April 1800.

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Faith: An evangelical Anglican converted in 1764 at St Albans, Cowper co-wrote the Olney Hymns with John Newton, though recurrent depression left him long convinced he was excluded from grace. Source: Encyclopaedia Britannica

See also: John Newton · William Wilberforce · Oliver Goldsmith · William Wordsworth · Samuel Taylor Coleridge