Thomas Lovell Beddoes
Thomas Lovell Beddoes (born July 20, 1803 in Clifton , † January 26, 1849 in Basel ) was an English medic and poet .
Life
Thomas Lovell Beddoes was born in Clifton in England as the son of the naturalist Thomas Beddoes (1760-1808). He attended school in Bath first , then the Charter House in London, and entered Pembroke College , Oxford, as a literature student in 1820 . There he soon caused a sensation through his collection of poems, The improvisatore (1821), which he later suppressed, and the dramatic composition The bride's tragedy (1822).
In the latter, in spite of some oddities, he demonstrated dramatic power, passion and depth of thought that justified great hopes; but internally unhappy and filled with unsteady wandering instinct, Beddoes met them only imperfectly. In order to devote himself entirely to his favorite sciences, physiology and anatomy , he went to Göttingen in 1825 , and later to Würzburg , where he received his doctorate in medicine in 1832. In the same year Beddoes appeared at the Gaibacher Fest and there presented a satire on aristocracy. In possession of a significant fortune, he then led a wandering life, now staying in Strasbourg and Zurich, now in Frankfurt am Main or Berlin. In 1838 he translated Richard Dugard Grainger's Structure of the Spinal Cord into German.
In 1846 he returned to England. In 1847, however, he was back in Frankfurt, where he practiced as a general practitioner for a year and took the most active part in the liberal movements of 1848. As a result of a fall from his horse, in which he broke both legs, he had to have himself amputated in Basel , where he had been taken because of the air change. Depressed, he committed suicide in the hospital on January 26, 1849.
Beddoes left only one dramatic poem of poetic products: Death's jestbook, or the fool's tragedy , even stranger than the earlier works, but at the same time even more so than these full of surprising flashes of inspiration. His literary estate appeared under the title: Poems, with a memoir , 1851, 2 vols., And also contains the above-mentioned Death's jestbook a number of melancholy lyrical poetry and several dramatic fragments.
literature
- Kelsall in the Fortnightly Review , July 1872.
- Bettina A. Bryan: Beddoes, Thomas Lovell. In: Werner E. Gerabek , Bernhard D. Haage, Gundolf Keil , Wolfgang Wegner (eds.): Enzyklopädie Medizingeschichte. De Gruyter, Berlin / New York 2005, ISBN 3-11-015714-4 , p. 159.
- Beddoes, Thomas Lovell . In: Encyclopædia Britannica . 11th edition. tape 3 : Austria - Bisectrix . London 1910, p. 614 (English, full text [ Wikisource ]).
- Beddoes . In: Meyers Konversations-Lexikon . 4th edition. Volume 2, Verlag des Bibliographisches Institut, Leipzig / Vienna 1885–1892, p. 595.
Web links
- Literature by and about Thomas Lovell Beddoes in the catalog of the German National Library
| personal data | |
|---|---|
| SURNAME | Beddoes, Thomas Lovell |
| BRIEF DESCRIPTION | English poet |
| DATE OF BIRTH | July 20, 1803 |
| PLACE OF BIRTH | Clifton (summer set) |
| DATE OF DEATH | January 26, 1849 |
| Place of death | Basel |