"and October 1892, there was a break of four years as a mark of respect; Tennyson's laureate poems ""Ode on the Death of the Duke of Wellington"" and ""The Charge of the Light Brigade"" were particularly cherished by the Victorian public. Five poets, Thomas Gray, Samuel Rogers, Walter Scott, Philip Larkin and Seamus Heaney, turned down the laureateship. The holder of the position as of 2018 is Carol Ann Duffy, who was appointed in May 2009 on a fixed ten-year term. The origins of the poet laureateship date back to 1616 when James I of England granted a pension to"
"his life as a scholar in Cambridge, and only later in his life did he begin traveling again. Although he was one of the least productive poets (his collected works published during his lifetime amount to fewer than 1,000 lines), he is regarded as the foremost English-language poet of the mid-18th century. In 1757, he was offered the post of Poet Laureate, which he refused. Gray was so self-critical and fearful of failure that he published only thirteen poems during his lifetime. He once wrote that he feared his collected works would be ""mistaken for the works of a flea."""
"and the pity of War. The Poetry is in the pity."" Of the 16 poets, Graves was the only one still living at the time of the commemoration ceremony. UK government documents released in 2012 indicate that Graves turned down a CBE in 1957. In 2012 the Nobel Records were opened after 50 years, and it was revealed that Graves was among a shortlist of authors considered for the 1962 Nobel Prize in Literature, along with John Steinbeck (winner), Lawrence Durrell, Jean Anouilh and Karen Blixen. Graves was rejected because even though he had written several historical novels he was"
"managers were defeated, and Theophilus regained control of the company on his own terms. Cibber's appointment as Poet Laureate in December 1730 was widely assumed to be a political rather than artistic honour, and a reward for his untiring support of the Whigs, the party of Prime Minister Robert Walpole. Most of the leading writers, such as Jonathan Swift and Alexander Pope, were excluded from contention for the laureateship because they were Tories. Cibber's verses had few admirers even in his own time, and Cibber acknowledged cheerfully that he did not think much of them. His 30 birthday odes for"
"Joseph Trapp Joseph Trapp (1679–1747) was an English clergyman, academic, poet and pamphleteer. His production as a younger man of occasional verse (some anonymous, or in Latin) and dramas led to his appointment as the first Oxford Professor of Poetry in 1708. Later his High Church opinions established him in preferment and position. As a poet, he was not well thought of by contemporaries, with Jonathan Swift refusing a dinner in an unavailing attempt to avoid revising one of Trapp’s poems, and Abel Evans making an epigram on his blank verse translation of the Aeneid with a reminder of the"
"the writer Ben Jonson. Although there were subsequent court poets it was not until 1668, and the appointment of John Dryden by Charles II, that the post was made an established royal office within the royal household. Dryden, who had been appointed following the success of his 1667 poem ""Annus Mirabilis"", was dismissed from office in 1689 following the accession of the Protestant William III and Mary II to the throne. Dryden, a Catholic convert, refused to take the Oath of Allegiance to the new monarchs and he was dismissed from the laureateship—the only holder to have been removed from"
"estate, and built Abbotsford House in a series of extensions. In 1813 Scott was offered the position of Poet Laureate. He declined, due to concerns that ""such an appointment would be a poisoned chalice"", as the Laureateship had fallen into disrepute, due to the decline in quality of work suffered by previous title holders, ""as a succession of poetasters had churned out conventional and obsequious odes on royal occasions."" He sought advice from the Duke of Buccleuch, who counseled him to retain his literary independence, and the position went to Scott's friend, Robert Southey. Although Scott had attained worldwide celebrity"
"in his ""Nugæ Chirurgicæ"" quotes a poetical jeu d'esprit on Glynn as a physician. Horace Walpole called him in 1792 'an old doting physician and Chattertonian at Cambridge,' and professed to believe that some falsehoods current about himself had been invented or disseminated by Glynn. In 1757 he competed successfully for the Seatonian Prize out of dislike for a certain Bally, who gained the same prize in 1756 and 1758; it was insinuated that he was not the author of his own poem. His poem of ""The Day of Judgement"" was printed at Cambridge in 1757, 2nd edit. 1757, 3rd"
"culture that prevailed in English literary circles in 1757 ""The Bard"" formed something of a challenge to Gray's readers. He claimed that ""all people of condition are agreed not to admire, nor even to understand"" the ""Odes"". In 1778 the political writer Percival Stockdale was one such negative voice: If the subject of a Poem is obscure, or not generally known, or not interesting, and if it abounds with allusions, and facts of this improper, and uninteresting character, the writer who chuses the subject, and introduces those improper, and unaffecting allusions, and facts, betrays a great want of poetical judgment,"
"position of Poet Laureate; Elizabeth Barrett Browning and Leigh Hunt had also been considered. He held the position until his own death in 1892, the longest tenure of any laureate. Tennyson fulfilled the requirements of this position by turning out appropriate but often uninspired verse, such as a poem of greeting to Princess Alexandra of Denmark when she arrived in Britain to marry the future King Edward VII. In 1855, Tennyson produced one of his best-known works, ""The Charge of the Light Brigade"", a dramatic tribute to the British cavalrymen involved in an ill-advised charge on 25 October 1854, during"
"""To Obscurity"" (1760) ""To Oblivion"" (1760) ""Chit-Chat, an imitation of Theocritus"" ""The Capricious Lovers (1764)"" ""The Actor (1760)"" ""The Cit's Country Box"" (1757) ""Spirit of Contradiction"" Robert Lloyd (poet) Robert Lloyd (1733–1764) was an English poet and satirist. Robert Lloyd was educated at Westminster School and Trinity College, Cambridge, graduating B.A. in 1755 and M.A. in 1758. He was author of the popular poem ""The Actor"" (1760) and the comic opera ""The Capricious Lovers"" (1764), first performed at Drury Lane just a few weeks before his death. He was co-author, with George Colman, of ""Ode to Obscurity"" and ""Ode to"
"In 1967 he asked several university graduates to name two red-flowered tree or an exclusively Indian animal. Nobody passed his test and he wrote Writing about the Indian consciousness of nature he wrote He refused a paid invitation from Air India for a trip to London for eminent Indians. He refused on another occasion an invitation from the Smithsonian Institution. He was a fierce individualist and a recluse. Author Ramachandra Guha called him a self-reliant, Thoreauvian individualist who would not allow a mere government to pay for him. He however accepted the Padma Shri from the Indian Government in 1970."
"poets. The name of ""bacca-laureate"" for a bachelor's degree shows a confusion with a supposed etymology from Latin bacca lauri (the laurel berry), which, though incorrect, involves the same idea. From the more general use of the term ""poet laureate"" arose its restriction in England to the office of the poet attached to the royal household, first held by Ben Jonson, for whom the position was, in its essentials, created by Charles I of England in 1617. Jonson's appointment does not seem to have been formally made as poet laureate, but his position was equivalent to that. The office was"
"He was also a friend of Horace Walpole and Joshua Reynolds. Mason's artwork was considered worthy of showing at the Royal Academy between 1782 and 1786. In 1785, he was William Pitt the Younger's choice to succeed William Whitehead as Poet Laureate but refused the honour. Two of his works of scenes at the York racecourse, ""A Country Racecourse with horses preparing to start"" and ""A Country Racecourse with horses running"". were reproduced as mezzotint illustrations in 1786 by Francis Jukes in collaboration with Robert Pollard. In 1797, Mason hurt his shin on a Friday while stepping out of his"
"he was the best, so to be the last, Latin poet of the Westminster line."" In another letter Cowper wrote, ""I lost more than I got by him; for he made me as idle as himself."" In 1734 he published his ""Poemata, Latine partim reddita, partim scripta"", with a dedication to the Duke of Newcastle, and in November of the same year he was appointed housekeeper and deputy sergeant-at-arms to the House of Commons. Later the Duke of Newcastle offered him valuable ecclesiastical preferment, which he declined from conscientious motives. In a letter to his wife, written shortly before his"
"Poges, the setting for his famous ""Elegy"". His grave can still be seen there. Thomas Gray Thomas Gray (26 December 1716 – 30 July 1771) was an English poet, letter-writer, classical scholar, and professor at Pembroke College, Cambridge. He is widely known for his ""Elegy Written in a Country Churchyard,"" published in 1751. Gray was an extremely self-critical writer who published only 13 poems in his lifetime, despite being extremely popular. He was even offered the position of Poet Laureate in 1757, though he declined. Thomas Gray was born in Cornhill, London. His father, Philip Gray, was a scrivener and"
"a live performance before the Queen. In July 1878, he walked from Dundee to Balmoral, a distance of about over mountainous terrain and through a violent thunderstorm to perform for Queen Victoria. When he arrived, he announced himself as ""The Queen's Poet"". The guards informed him ""You're not the Queen's poet! Tennyson is the Queen's poet!"" (Alfred Lord Tennyson was the poet laureate). McGonagall presented the letter but was refused entry and had to return home. Undeterred, his poetry writing continued, and he reported events to the newspapers, earning some minor recognition. Throughout his life McGonagall campaigned against excessive drinking,"
"Henry James Pye Henry James Pye (; 10 February 1744 – 11 August 1813) was an English poet, and Poet Laureate from 1790 until his death. He was the first poet laureate to receive a fixed salary of £27 instead of the historic tierce of Canary wine (though it was still a fairly nominal payment; then as now the Poet Laureate had to look to extra sales generated by the prestige of the office to make significant money from the Laureateship). Pye was born in London, the son of Henry Pye of Faringdon House in Berkshire, and his wife, Mary"
"read 'Requiem for the Croppies' wasn't to say ‘up the IRA’ or anything. It was silence-breaking rather than rabble-rousing."" He stated, ""You don't have to love it. You just have to permit it."" He turned down the offer of laureateship of the United Kingdom, partly for political reasons, commenting, ""I’ve nothing against the Queen personally: I had lunch at the Palace once upon a time."" He stated that his ""cultural starting point"" was ""off-centre"". A much-quoted statement was when he objected to being included in ""The Penguin Book of Contemporary British Poetry"" (1982). Although he was born in Northern Ireland,"
"William Wordsworth (1770–1850), and the other Lake Poets, while the poet William Barnes (1801–1886) is seen as primarily a Dorset poet, especially because of his use of Dorset dialect. John Clare (1793 – 1864) was commonly known as ""the Northamptonshire Peasant Poet"". His formal education was brief, his other employment and class-origins were lowly. Clare resisted the use of the increasingly standardised English grammar and orthography in his poetry and prose, alluding to political reasoning in comparing ""grammar"" (in a wider sense of orthography) to tyrannical government and slavery, personifying it in jocular fashion as a ""bitch"". He wrote in"
"the most part contented himself with the unofficial laureateship which the younger writers granted to his London reputation. In 1798 he was living in Baltimore and still clinging to his faith in the French Revolution. On 14 Dec., in the morning, while walking in his garden, he fell in an apoplectic fit, and three hours later was dead. Only ""The Laurel of Liberty"" has ever been reissued (British Library, 2011, ). ""The Magician no Conjuror"" (with music by Joseph Mazzinghi) was performed at the Theatre Royal, Covent Garden in 1972. Robert Merry Robert Merry (1755–1798) was an English poet and"
"He was select preacher 1801–2, and classical examiner during 1803–4. On 31 October 1793 he unsuccessfully contested the Professorship of Poetry at Oxford against James Hurdis. In 1802 he canvassed again for the same post, but refrained from going to the poll. On the first occasion he published, as his credentials for the professorship, a volume of ""Juvenile Poems"", most of which had appeared in the ""Gentleman's Magazine"", but he afterwards endeavoured to suppress it. His person lent itself to caricature, and in June 1807 he was depicted by Robert Dighton in 'A View from Trinity' as a tall man,"
"weakest of his work. He suggested that the poet John Milton had employed both an amanuensis and an editor, who were responsible for clerical errors and interpolations, but it is unclear whether Bentley believed his own position. A. E. Housman, who called him ""the greatest scholar that England or perhaps that Europe ever bred"" nevertheless criticised his poetic sensibility severely: ""...we are not all so easily found out as Bentley, because we have not Bentley's intrepid candour. There is a sort of savage nobility about his firm reliance on his own bad taste..."". Bentley never published his planned edition of"
"30 July 1679. His best-known poem is ""Iter Boreale. Attempting Something upon the Successful and Matchless March of the Lord General George Monk from Scotland to London. By a Rural Pen"". It was printed on 23 April (London, 1660), and at once became popular, as a tribute to General George Monck. An edition ""Poems by Robert Wilde"" was published by John Hunt in 1870. Robert Wild (poet) Robert Wild (Wylde) (1615–1679) was an English clergyman and poet, ejected from his living in 1662. Despite presbyterian views, Wild was a royalist in politics. John Dryden called him 'the Wither of the"
"good period of his career, contemporary reviewers were split on the matter and many negative reviews cast doubts on his circle of poets known as the Lake Poets. Negative reviews were found in the ""Critical Review"", ""Le Beau Monde"" and ""Literary Annual Register"". George Gordon Byron, a fellow Romantic poet but not an associate of Wordsworth's, responded to ""Poems in Two Volumes"", in a 3 July 1807 ""Monthly Literary Recreations"" review, with a claim that the collection lacked the quality found in ""Lyrical Ballads"". When referring to ""Ode: Intimations of Immortality"", he dismissed the poem as Wordsworth's ""innocent odes"" without"
"providing any in-depth response, stating only: ""On the whole, however, with the exception of the above, and other innocent odes of the same cast, we think these volumes display a genius worthy of higher pursuits, and regret that Mr. W. confines his muse to such trifling subjects... Many, with inferior abilities, have acquired a loftier seat on Parnassus, merely by attempting strains in which Mr. W. is more qualified to excel."" The poem was received negatively but for a different reason from Wordsworth's and Coleridge's friend Robert Southey, also a Romantic poet. Southey, in an 8 December 1807 letter to"
"to the queen as a candidate for the laureateship. Savage's literary inactivity (interrupted only by his occasional poems to the queen and to Robert Walpole, which he unsuccessfully tried to win as a patron) ultimately seemed to irritate Lord Tyrconnel, and by 1735 their relationship had deteriorated to the point that Lord Tyrconnel forbade him to continue living in his apartment in Arlington Street and stopped providing him his pension. Now reduced to poverty, Savage became a frequent target for a growing number of satires and attacks, but began publishing again for Cave's ""The Gentleman's Magazine"". It is not clear"
"of speech. William Edmondstoune Aytoun (1813–65), eventually appointed Professor of belles lettres at the University of Edinburgh, is best known for ""The lays of the Scottish Cavaliers"" and made use of the ballad form in his poems, including ""Bothwell"". Among the most successful Scottish poets was the Glasgow-born Thomas Campbell (1777–1844), whose produced patriotic British songs, including ""Ye Mariners of England"", a reworking of ""Rule Britannia!"", and sentimental but powerful epics on contemporary events, including ""Gertrude of Wyoming"". His works were extensively reprinted in the period 1800–60. Among the most influential poets of the later nineteenth century that rejected the"
"and social agitation had died down, he returned to his practice as a barrister, which he had deserted, and also wrote largely. He produced a number of novels, including ""The Maid of Warsaw"" and ""Woman's Wrongs"", also some poems, ""The Painter of Florence"",""The Battle Day"" (1855), ""The Revolt of Hindostan"" (1857), and ""Corayda"" (1859). Some of his lyrics, such as ""The Song of the Poor"", ""The Song of the Day Labourers"", and ""The Factory Slave"", were well known. He made several unsuccessful attempts to enter parliament and was about to contest Manchester, with the certainty of being returned, when he"
"but had been excluded from his rightful place. This tragic life-story was the secret hidden in the plays. This argument was taken up by several other writers, notably C.Y.C. Dawbarn in ""Uncrowned"" (1913) and Alfred Dodd in ""The Personal Poems of Francis Bacon"" (1931) and many other publications. The American poet Walt Whitman declared himself agnostic on the issue and refrained from endorsing an alternative candidacy. Voicing his skepticism to Horace Traubel, Whitman remarked, ""While I am not yet ready to say Bacon I am decidedly unwilling to say Shaksper. I do not seem to have any patience with the"
"in the absence of Sike, a better-known orientalist. Sike was elected in August 1705, but on the professorship falling vacant again seven years later, Bouquett was elected to fill it permanently. He died senior fellow of Trinity on 12 February 1748, aged 79. As a Fellow of Trinity he refused to sign the petition against Richard Bentley; he was considered eccentric if rich. Bouquett contributed a copy of elegiacs to the university collection of poems on the death of George I and accession of George II in 1727. He left money to French refugees. Philip Bouquett Philip Bouquett or Bouquet"
"the post of Poet Laureate. He declined, not least because he felt he had long since ceased to be a writer of poetry in a meaningful sense. The following year Larkin began to suffer from oesophageal cancer. On 11 June 1985 he underwent surgery, but his cancer was found to have spread and was inoperable. On 28 November he collapsed and was readmitted to hospital. He died four days later, on 2 December 1985, at the age of 63, and was buried at the Cottingham municipal cemetery near Hull. His grave can be found on the left hand side of"
"the honour that no formal effusions from him should be required. Due to his age, he became the only laureate to write no official poetry. Tennyson was generally happy in his numerous poems of this class. On Tennyson's death there was a considerable feeling that there was no acceptable successor. William Morris and Swinburne were hardly suitable as court poets. Eventually the undesirability of breaking the tradition for temporary reasons, and severing the one official link between literature and the state, prevailed over the protests against allowing someone of inferior genius to follow Tennyson. Abolition was similarly advocated when Warton"