George Crabbe

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George Crabbe (born December 24, 1754 in Aldeburgh , † February 3, 1832 in Trowbridge ) was a British poet, known for poems about the life of simple people in the country.

George Crabbe, painting by Henry William Pickersgill, c. 1818/19, National Portrait Gallery

Life

Crabbe's father was a teacher and later a tax collector for salt and Crabbe went to Bungay and Stowmarket ( Suffolk ) to school. He learned Latin and read Shakespeare , Alexander Pope , Abraham Cowley , Walter Raleigh, and Edmund Spenser . In 1768 he was apprenticed to a doctor and surgeon in Bury St. Edmunds and later, since his first teacher employed him mainly in agriculture, in Woodbridge (Suffolk) . He met his future wife Sarah Elmy ( Mira ) there and began writing poetry, for which he received a prize in 1772. His Inebriety , published in 1775, received little attention. He practiced as a doctor in Aldeburgh and in 1777 went to London for a year with the intention of further training in a hospital, but got into financial difficulties and could hardly live on his earnings as a surgeon.

The turning point came after he sent poems (parts of The Village and The Library) to Edmund Burke in 1781 , who received them positively and promoted him from then on. He moved to Burke and gained access to its circle of friends and acquaintances, including Joshua Reynolds , Samuel Johnson and Charles James Fox . Burke also found that he was better suited to be a minister than a surgeon, and on his recommendation and thanks to a good knowledge of Latin, he was ordained in 1781. He became chaplain to the Duke of Rutland in Leicestershire (Belvoir Castle). Success began in 1783 with the publication of his poem The Village . Through the mediation of high clergy he received a degree from Trinity College, Cambridge (without having to be there) and another from the Archbishop of Canterbury. He married in 1783 and subsequently received a number of pastoral posts in the country, often through the mediation of the Rutland ducal family. In 1814 he became rector of Trowbridge.

He made friends with Walter Scott and William Wordsworth and other Lake Poets . His poems drew a picture of English country life in an unsentimental, realistic way and were mostly in the form of the heroic couplet as Pope and Geoffrey Chaucer used them. He was the favorite poet of Jane Austen and was designed by Lord Byron admired ( Nature's sternest painter but the best , the most severe painter of nature, but the best ).

Benjamin Britten's opera Peter Grimes (1945) is based on The Borough .

Fonts

  • Inebriety , 1775
  • The Candidate , 1780
  • The Library , 1781
  • The Village , 1782
  • The Newspaper , 1785
  • The Parish Register , 1807
  • Poems , 1807
  • The Borough , 1810
  • Tales in Verse , 1812
  • Tales of the Hall , 2 volumes, 1819
  • Posthumous Tales , 1834
  • AW Ward (Editor): Poems , 3 Volumes, 1905–1907

literature

  • Frank Whitehead George Crabbe: a reappraisal , Susquehanna University Press 1995
  • T. Bareham, S. Gatrell: A bibliography of George Crabbe , Folkestone 1978
  • The poetical works of the Rev. George Crabbe. Edited, with a life, by his son . J. Murray, London 1851
  • Arthur Pollard: Crabbe, the critical heritage . Routledge and Paul, London 1972
  • Terence Bareham: George Crabbe . Vision Press, London 1977
  • TE Kebbel: Life of George Crabbe . Kennikat Press, Port Washington, New York 1972
  • Leslie Stephen: Crabbe, George , in: Dictionary of National Biography , 1885-1900, Vol. 12, pp. 428-431
  • Thomas C. Faulkner: Crabbe, George (1754-1832) , in: Oxford Dictionary of National Biography , 2004, doi: 10.1093 / ref: odnb / 6552

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Biography in Poets Grave
personal data
SURNAME Crabbe, George
BRIEF DESCRIPTION British poet
DATE OF BIRTH December 24, 1754
PLACE OF BIRTH Aldeburgh
DATE OF DEATH February 3, 1832
Place of death Trowbridge