David Gray (poet)

David Gray (born January 29, 1838 in Kirkintilloch , † December 3, 1861 Merkland ) was a Scottish poet.

life and work

He was born in Duntiblae-on-Banks of Luggie which belongs to Kirkintilloch, a small town in East Dunbartonshire near Glasgow , the eldest of eight children. His parents were the weaver David Gray and his wife Ann, nee Cloggie. During his childhood, the family moved to the nearby hamlet of Merkland.

Gray attended school in Kirkintilloch and was able through his work as a tutor and substitute teacher visiting the University in Glasgow permit. There he turned to poetry, although his parents would have preferred if he had pursued the profession of clergyman. In Glasgow he began to write poetry for the Glasgow Citizen . His main work, The Luggie , comes from this period , an idyllic poem about the river where Gray grew up.

His closest confidante at this time was the ten-year-old poet Robert Buchanan . The two decided to go to London to make a living from writing. They carried out this resolution in May 1860, although Gray's correspondent, the poet Richard Monckton Milnes (later Lord Houghton), had strongly advised against it.

After arriving in London, Houghton tried to persuade Gray to return to Scotland, where he had at least had a livelihood by teaching, but Gray preferred London. Houghton's attempt to get the poem about the Luggie in Cornhill Magazine failed and he could only get Gray small orders. Gray and Buchanan's living conditions at that time were pathetic. They lived in an attic in Blackfriars , which caused Gray's poor health to suffer considerably as he was now infected with tuberculosis .

Gray traveled back to Scotland in the course of 1860, where he did not stay long, but went south for health reasons. Houghton allowed him to stay in Torquay , but Gray's health was irreparably damaged and he was homesick. In January 1861 he finally returned to Scotland. Here he wrote in his last year, some sonnets, which he titled In the Shadow (dt .: In the shadow summarized). He died before the end of the year. In 1865 his friends erected a tombstone on his grave in the Kirkintilloch cemetery.

His works have been published several times posthumously. Gray's correspondence with Houghton is now on file at Trinity College , Cambridge.

Works

• Richard Monckton Milnes Houghton, James Hedderwick (eds.): The Luggie And Other Poems By David Gray. With A Memoir By James Hedderwick And A Prefatory Notice By RM Milnes, MP . Macmillan and Co., Cambridge, London 1862.
• Richard Monckton Milnes Houghton, James Hedderwick (eds.): Poems by David Gray. With Momories of his Life . Roberts Brothers, Boston 1865

literature

• TW Bayne, James How (rev.), Lemma: Gray, David (1838–1861) , In: Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, Oxford University Press, 2004 (online edition, accessed August 13, 2009)
• Robert Buchana: David Gray . In: ders .: David Gray, and other essays, chiefly on poertry . London 1868. p. 61-174