{\b Jones Very}.

{\b Date of Birth}.: 28 August 1813

{\b Date of Death}.: 8 May 1880

{\b Works}.

Jones Very wrote over seven hundred poems, most of which explore the 
relationship between God and self. His works include The Columbine, Thy 
Brothers Blood and The Lost. Very was a member of a group called the 
Transcendentalists, the members of which included Henry David Thoreau, Bronson 
Alcott and Margaret Fuller. This group was patronised by Ralph Waldo Emerson 
who is considered to be one of the most brilliant thinkers and poets of the 
nineteenth century.

{\b Featured Works}.

'The Dead', 'Morning', 'Night', 'Day'.

{\b General Comment}.s
Very was born in Salem, Massachusetts, U.S.A. Whilst working as a tutor of 
Greek, and also studying at Divinity school, he experienced a spiritual 
conversion and claimed that many of his sonnets were the result of direct 
communication with the Holy Spirit. Due to his claims he was persuaded to 
enter a mental asylum for the insane. He was, however, pronounced "profoundly 
sane" by friends and members of the Transcendentalists, who helped him publish 
Essays and Poems (1839). He was highly praised by many of his contemporaries 
at first but later became a source of embarrassment due to his fanaticism 
about both spiritual and poetical matters. During the last forty years of his 
life, Very's writing consisted entirely of sermons.