"An Elegy Wrote in a Country Church Yard"
By
Thomas Gray
Transcription, correction, editorial commentary, and markup by The Text Creation Partnership and Students and Staff of The University of Virginia
Elegy"An Elegy Wrote in a Country Church Yard" is probably the most well-known and beloved poem in English from the eighteenth century. It was immediately popular with readers when it was first printed in 1751, and has been reprinted (usually often the later, slightly revised title "An Elegy Written in a Country Churchyard"), anthologized, recited, translated, memorized, studied, parodied, and quoted ever since. The poem's publication kicked off an entire movement of what has been known as "graveyard poetry," poems centered around a figure--usually a man--walking quietly through a graveyard, musing on his place in the cosmos and on his own mortality. The poem's author, Thomas Gray (1716-1771), did not write a great deal of poetry compared to many other canonical poets, and he published only a handful of poems in his own lifetime. He led a fairly quiet life as an academic in Cambridge. But the "Elegy" has been enough to ensure Gray a lasting place in English literary history.
What made Gray's "Elegy" stand out then and makes it significant now? Perhaps the most important clue is in the word "elegy" itself. An elegy is a poem of praise for the a dead person, and poets of this period very frequently wrote elegies to commemorate a death. Sometimes these were elegies for a famous person; other elegies were written to mark the passing of a family member or friend. Gray does something different. Rather than writing about an individual person and describing their virtues in the manner of most elegies, Gray offers praise for the long-gone, ordinary people whose lives are now largely forgotten, commemorated only by the names on the headstones in an undistinguished cemetary next to a typical small church in an unnamed English village. The poem praises ordinary, not extraordinary people, people whom the poet walking through the graveyard never knew. In its final stanzas, the poem then turns in another direction, as it offers an epitaph (that is, a poem that would be inscribed on a gravestone) that seems to be the future epitaph for the poet himself. - [JOB]EDITORAlthough he is not identified here, the "editor" is surely Horace Walpole, Gray's friend for many years. When Gray learned that the poem was going to be published against his wishes in a periodical, the Magazine of Magazines, he wrote from his home in Cambridge to Walpole asking him to supervise getting a separate edition printed by a more respectable London printer. (There's a good chance, too, that it was Walpole's handwritten copy of the the poem that somehow made its way to William Owen, the publisher of the magazine, so it was his responsbility to make things right.) Walpole turned to Robert Dodsley, one of the most prestigious publishers in London at the time, and expedited the process. The magazine version and this stand-alone version came out at roughly the same time in February 1751.CurfeuA bell rung at the end of the working day, signaling the "curfew," the time when people should return home. Curfew bells continued to be rung in some villages well into the nineteenth century.HampdenJohn Hampden (1594-1643) was a prominent member of Parliament who led the opposition against Charles I, helping to prompt the start of the English Civil War in the 1640s. Hampden was killed in a battle between Parliamentary forces and those of the King.MiltonThe poet John Milton (1608-1674), author of Paradise Lost, and also a prominent supporter of the Parliament's side in the English Civil War.
What made Gray's "Elegy" stand out then and makes it significant now? Perhaps the most important clue is in the word "elegy" itself. An elegy is a poem of praise for the a dead person, and poets of this period very frequently wrote elegies to commemorate a death. Sometimes these were elegies for a famous person; other elegies were written to mark the passing of a family member or friend. Gray does something different. Rather than writing about an individual person and describing their virtues in the manner of most elegies, Gray offers praise for the long-gone, ordinary people whose lives are now largely forgotten, commemorated only by the names on the headstones in an undistinguished cemetary next to a typical small church in an unnamed English village. The poem praises ordinary, not extraordinary people, people whom the poet walking through the graveyard never knew. In its final stanzas, the poem then turns in another direction, as it offers an epitaph (that is, a poem that would be inscribed on a gravestone) that seems to be the future epitaph for the poet himself. - [JOB]EDITORAlthough he is not identified here, the "editor" is surely Horace Walpole, Gray's friend for many years. When Gray learned that the poem was going to be published against his wishes in a periodical, the Magazine of Magazines, he wrote from his home in Cambridge to Walpole asking him to supervise getting a separate edition printed by a more respectable London printer. (There's a good chance, too, that it was Walpole's handwritten copy of the the poem that somehow made its way to William Owen, the publisher of the magazine, so it was his responsbility to make things right.) Walpole turned to Robert Dodsley, one of the most prestigious publishers in London at the time, and expedited the process. The magazine version and this stand-alone version came out at roughly the same time in February 1751.CurfeuA bell rung at the end of the working day, signaling the "curfew," the time when people should return home. Curfew bells continued to be rung in some villages well into the nineteenth century.HampdenJohn Hampden (1594-1643) was a prominent member of Parliament who led the opposition against Charles I, helping to prompt the start of the English Civil War in the 1640s. Hampden was killed in a battle between Parliamentary forces and those of the King.MiltonThe poet John Milton (1608-1674), author of Paradise Lost, and also a prominent supporter of the Parliament's side in the English Civil War.
[TP]
AN
ELEGYElegyElegy"An Elegy Wrote in a Country Church Yard" is probably the most well-known and beloved poem in English from the eighteenth century. It was immediately popular with readers when it was first printed in 1751, and has been reprinted (usually often the later, slightly revised title "An Elegy Written in a Country Churchyard"), anthologized, recited, translated, memorized, studied, parodied, and quoted ever since. The poem's publication kicked off an entire movement of what has been known as "graveyard poetry," poems centered around a figure--usually a man--walking quietly through a graveyard, musing on his place in the cosmos and on his own mortality. The poem's author, Thomas Gray (1716-1771), did not write a great deal of poetry compared to many other canonical poets, and he published only a handful of poems in his own lifetime. He led a fairly quiet life as an academic in Cambridge. But the "Elegy" has been enough to ensure Gray a lasting place in English literary history.
What made Gray's "Elegy" stand out then and makes it significant now? Perhaps the most important clue is in the word "elegy" itself. An elegy is a poem of praise for the a dead person, and poets of this period very frequently wrote elegies to commemorate a death. Sometimes these were elegies for a famous person; other elegies were written to mark the passing of a family member or friend. Gray does something different. Rather than writing about an individual person and describing their virtues in the manner of most elegies, Gray offers praise for the long-gone, ordinary people whose lives are now largely forgotten, commemorated only by the names on the headstones in an undistinguished cemetary next to a typical small church in an unnamed English village. The poem praises ordinary, not extraordinary people, people whom the poet walking through the graveyard never knew. In its final stanzas, the poem then turns in another direction, as it offers an epitaph (that is, a poem that would be inscribed on a gravestone) that seems to be the future epitaph for the poet himself. - [JOB]
WROTE IN A
Country Church Yard.
LONDON
Printed by R. DODSLEY in Pall-mall;
And sold by M. COOPER in Pater-noster-row. 1751.
[Price Six-pence.]
ELEGYElegyElegy"An Elegy Wrote in a Country Church Yard" is probably the most well-known and beloved poem in English from the eighteenth century. It was immediately popular with readers when it was first printed in 1751, and has been reprinted (usually often the later, slightly revised title "An Elegy Written in a Country Churchyard"), anthologized, recited, translated, memorized, studied, parodied, and quoted ever since. The poem's publication kicked off an entire movement of what has been known as "graveyard poetry," poems centered around a figure--usually a man--walking quietly through a graveyard, musing on his place in the cosmos and on his own mortality. The poem's author, Thomas Gray (1716-1771), did not write a great deal of poetry compared to many other canonical poets, and he published only a handful of poems in his own lifetime. He led a fairly quiet life as an academic in Cambridge. But the "Elegy" has been enough to ensure Gray a lasting place in English literary history.
What made Gray's "Elegy" stand out then and makes it significant now? Perhaps the most important clue is in the word "elegy" itself. An elegy is a poem of praise for the a dead person, and poets of this period very frequently wrote elegies to commemorate a death. Sometimes these were elegies for a famous person; other elegies were written to mark the passing of a family member or friend. Gray does something different. Rather than writing about an individual person and describing their virtues in the manner of most elegies, Gray offers praise for the long-gone, ordinary people whose lives are now largely forgotten, commemorated only by the names on the headstones in an undistinguished cemetary next to a typical small church in an unnamed English village. The poem praises ordinary, not extraordinary people, people whom the poet walking through the graveyard never knew. In its final stanzas, the poem then turns in another direction, as it offers an epitaph (that is, a poem that would be inscribed on a gravestone) that seems to be the future epitaph for the poet himself. - [JOB]
WROTE IN A
Country Church Yard.
LONDON
Printed by R. DODSLEY in Pall-mall;
And sold by M. COOPER in Pater-noster-row. 1751.
[Price Six-pence.]
![Page [TP]](https://anthologyassetsdev.lib.virginia.edu/gray-elegy/pageImages/elegy-title-page.jpg)
Page [TP]