The Life and Letters of William Lisle Bowles - Poet and Parson 1762-1850

Full length biography and study of influential English poet and Wiltshire clergyman, setting him in his literary context, and among his circle of friends and acquaintances. Willia, Lisle Bowles is considered by many to be the father of the Romantic poets who flourished at the end of the 18th and the beginning of the 19th centuries. His Fourteen Sonnets, Elegiac and Descriptive, written during a Tour was published in 1879 and the subsequent editions were read with delight by Coleridge, Wordsworth, Lamb and Southey who acknowledged Bowles's influence on their own poetry. As the incumbent of Bremhill in Wiltshire, his friendship with the Marquis of Landsdowne at nearby Bowood brought him into contact with many of the celebrities of the day, including the Irish poet Thomas Moore, whose affectionate and frank references to Bowles in his letters and journals enable the reader to obtain a rare insight into his friend's character. The account of his day-to-day activities as a country clergyman and magistrate, and later as a canon residentiary of Salisbury Cathedral, tells much of the character of this kindly, and often eccentric, Wiltshire parson...