{\b Thomas Lovell Beddoes}.

{\b Date of Birth}.: 20 July 1803

{\b Date of Death}.: 26 January 1849

{\b Works}.

English poet. His writing career started promisingly when he wrote The 
Improvisatore (1821) and The Bride's Tragedy (1822) before he was twenty. 
However, he later wrote only one major work, Death's Jest-Book, or the Fool's 
Tragedy (1825).

{\b Featured Works}.

'Dream-Pedlary', 'Wolfram's Dirge', 'The Old Ghost', 'The Rosy Hour', 'Song on 
the Water', 'Resurrection Song', 'Song, from "Torrismond"', 'The Phantom-Wooer'.

{\b General Comment}.

Born in Clifton, Bristol, Beddoes was educated at Bath Grammar School, London, 
and Pembroke College, Oxford. Like his father, he decided to become a 
physician and he went on to study medicine in Germany at the University of 
Gottingen (1825-29) and later at Warzburg (1829-32). As a physician and 
anatomist he chose to live away from home, settling in Switzerland and 
Germany. Far from home and his literary audience, he never had enough 
enthusiasm to seriously pursue his literary career. His life's work, Death's 
Jest-Book, was altered several times between 1825 and 1849 but never really 
completed. The work reveals an obsession for the supernatural, for death and 
decay. He is best remembered for his scattered lines and passages that reveal 
great poetic talent, but who largely let this talent go to waste. His verdict 
on himself was that he "ought to have been a good poet," but he was unsettled 
and spent his last years wandering in Germany and drinking heavily. He 
attempted suicide several times and it came as no surprise when he eventually 
succeeded, thus bringing to an end a lonely and even tragic life.