William Collins (poet)

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William Collins

William Collins (born December 25, 1721 in Chichester , England , † June 12, 1759 there ) was a British poet .

life and work

In 1738, as a student at Winchester College , William Collins wrote his four Persian Eclogues (printed in 1742; 2nd edition under the title Oriental Eclogues , 1759) under the influence of Alexander Popes Pastorals . It was in Winchester that he began his enduring friendship with the author and critic Joseph Warton . He graduated from Oxford in 1743. He then turned to London in 1744 to devote himself entirely to literary activity. Soon afterwards he made a great inheritance, now appeared as a bon vivant and befriended Samuel Johnson . His wastefulness plunged him into debt, so he wrote a volume odes in collaboration with Warton . For him it was disappointing that his Odes on Several Descriptive and Allegorical Subjects (1747), however, received no attention.

Thanks to a legacy from his uncle, who died in 1749, Collins was able to pay off his debts and has now dealt with the superstitions of the High Scots in an ode ( Ode on the Popular Superstitions of the Highlands of Scotland ). His poetry contained some prelude to romanticism. He combined the classic striving for external perfection with a new evaluation of the poetic imagination. But from 1751 he became increasingly melancholy and sought in vain to cure his ailing health under the milder part of the sky in the south. When he returned sick, he went mad, was placed in a mental hospital in 1754, then was taken care of by his sister and died on June 12, 1759 at the age of only 37 in his hometown.

It was not until long after his death that Collins' poems, including the most beautiful Ode to Evening (1746), How Sleep the Brave (1746), The Passions and Ode to Simplicity , received due recognition and have since been distributed in numerous editions. The editions of his works include a. those of Barbauld (London 1797), Dyce (London 1827), Thomas (London 1858), W. Bronson (Boston 1898, with biography) and R. Wendorf and C. Ryskamp ( Works of William Collins , 1979).

literature

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ a b c William Colins in the Encyclopædia Britannica online.
  2. ^ A b c Collins, William , in: Gero von Wilpert (Ed.): Lexikon der Weltliteratur , Vol. 1: Authors , Alfred Kröner Verlag, 3rd edition Stuttgart 1988, ISBN 3-520-80703-3 , p. 312 .
  3. ↑ William Collins (poet) . In: Meyers Konversations-Lexikon . 4th edition. Volume 4, Verlag des Bibliographisches Institut, Leipzig / Vienna 1885–1892, p. 214.
personal data
SURNAME Collins, William
BRIEF DESCRIPTION British poet
DATE OF BIRTH December 25, 1721
PLACE OF BIRTH Chichester , England
DATE OF DEATH June 12, 1759
Place of death Chichester , England