George Crabbe: An English Life - Softcover

Powell, Neil

Softcover

ISBN 10: 1845952189 ISBN 13: 9781845952181

Publisher: Pimlico, 2014

Synopsis

The poet George Crabbe (1754 - 1832), best known as the author of Peter Grimes and The Village, was also a surgeon, a clergyman, a botanist, and a novelist. An ambitious, resourceful, self-made professional man, he devoted his middle years to his children and his increasingly ill wife, after whose death he embarked, at 60, on an astonishing second life. This new biography charts, for the first time, Crabbe's progress from an impoverished, provincial childhood in coastal Suffolk to late eighteenth-century London, where he witnessed the Gordon Riots and acquired Edmund Burke as patron; through his eventful career as a ducal chaplain and county parson whose addictions included natural history, theatre-going, and opium; and so on to his final years when, as a rector in Wiltshire, he travelled widely, met major literary figures such as Scott and Wordsworth, and fell in love with some remarkable young women. Neil Powell provides a compelling portrait of a uniquely gifted poet - a man of low-key and unsentimental vision who lived a quintessentially English life.

About this title

From the Publisher:

The English poet George Crabbe, best known as the author of Peter Grimes and The Village, was also a surgeon, clergyman, botanist, and novelist. An ambitious, resourceful, self–made professional man, he devoted his middle years to his children and his increasingly ill wife, after whose death he embarked, at 60, on an astonishing second life. This new biography charts Crabbe’s progress from an impoverished provincial childhood to the excitement and sophistication of late 18th–century London; through his career as a ducal chaplain and country parson whose addictions included theater–going and opium; to his final years when, as a rector, he traveled widely, met major literary figures, and fell in love with some remarkable young women. A compelling portrait of a uniquely gifted poet who lived a quintessentially English life.

About the Author:

Neil Powell is a poet, biographer, editor, and lecturer. His books include five collections of poetry - At the Edge (1977), A Season of Calm Weather (1982), True Colours (1991), The Stones on Thorpeness Beach (1994) and Selected Poems (1998) - as well as Carpenters of Light (1979), Roy Fuller: Writer and Society (1995) and The Language of Jazz (1997). He lives in Suffolk.

About this edition

• Publisher: Pimlico
• Publication date: 2014
• ISBN 10: 1845952189
• ISBN 13: 9781845952181
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 384