{\b Thomas Gray}.

{\b Date of Birth}.: 26 December 1716 

{\b Date of Death}.: 30 July 1771

{\b Works}.

English poet.

 His best known work is Elegy Written in a Country Church-Yard (written 1750, 
published 1751) where Gray celebrates the life of the "common man" in a way 
that anticipates Wordsworth. His first published work was Ode on a Distant 
Prospect of Eton College (1747), followed by Ode on the Spring and Sonnet on 
the Death of West. He wrote two Pindaric Odes The Progress of Poetry (1754) 
and The Bard (1757). He had an interest in Old Norse and Welsh poetry which 
produced The Fatal Sisters and The Descent of Odin (1768), and some of his 
letters also remain.

Gray had small output but was a dominant poet of the mid-eighteenth century 
pre-romantic era.

{\b Featured Works}.

'Ode on a Distant Prospect of Eton College', 'Hymn to Adversity', 'Ode on the 
Spring', 'Ode on the Pleasure Arising from Vicissitude', 'The Bard', 'The 
Progress of Poesy', 'Sonnet on the Death of Mr Richard West', 'Elegy Written 
in a Country Churchyard', 'On the Death of a Favourite Cat, Drowned in a Tub 
of Gold Fishes'.

{\b General Comment}.

Gray's father was a scrivener while his mother and aunt kept a milliner's 
shop. He led a quiet, studious life in the main, training in law after his 
degree at Cambridge and then becoming a history done at Peterhouse.

 Gray formed a friendship with Walpole which was broken off as a result of a 
disagreement during a "Grand Tour of Europe" (1734-39), though they were 
eventually reconciled in 1745. This friendship was important to Gray's 
literary career and Walpole later published The Progress of Poetry and The 
Bard, an impassioned summary of English history, on his Strawberry Hill Press. 
Gray sent his Ode on the Spring to an Etonian friend, Richard West, who died 
shortly afterwards, prompting the Sonnet on the Death of West. 
Gray was immensely popular and helped to create a new taste in poetry; fertile 
ground for the romantic poets to follow him. In 1757 at the death of the Poet 
Laureate Cibber, the post was offered to Gray, but he refused it.