Gray's father was a scrivener while his mother and aunt kept a milliner's shop. He led a quiet, studious life in the main, training in law after his degree at Cambridge and then becoming a history done at Peterhouse.
Gray formed a friendship with Walpole which was broken off as a result of a disagreement during a "Grand Tour of Europe" (1734-39), though they were eventually reconciled in 1745. This friendship was important to Gray's literary career and Walpole later published The Progress of Poetry and The Bard, an impassioned summary of English history, on his Strawberry Hill Press. Gray sent his Ode on the Spring to an Etonian friend, Richard West, who died shortly afterwards, prompting the Sonnet on the Death of West. Gray was immensely popular and helped to create a new taste in poetry; fertile ground for the romantic poets to follow him. In 1757 at the death of the Poet
Laureate Cibber, the post was offered to Gray, but he refused it.
Poems by this Poet
| Poem | Post date |
Rating |
Comments |
|---|---|---|---|
| Ode On The Death Of A Favourite Cat Drowned In A Tub Of Goldfishes | 31 May 2013 |
(3 votes) |
0 |
| Ode On A Distant Prospect Of Eton College | 31 May 2013 |
(1 vote) |
0 |
| Hymn To Adversity | 29 November 2013 |
(1 vote) |
0 |
| The Curse Upon Edward | 31 July 2013 |
(1 vote) |
0 |
| The Death of Hoel | 29 November 2013 |
(1 vote) |
0 |
| The Fatal Sisters | 31 July 2013 |
(1 vote) |
0 |
| The Progress of Poesy | 31 July 2013 |
(1 vote) |
0 |
| Now the golden morn aloft | 29 November 2013 |
(2 votes) |
0 |
| Ode On The Pleasure Arising From Vicissitude | 31 May 2013 |
(1 vote) |
0 |
| William Shakespeare to Mrs Anne, Regular Servant to the Rev. Mr Precentor of York | 29 November 2013 |
(1 vote) |
0 |