The Literary Gothic | Thomas Gray

Gray, Thomas

Perhaps the most well-known member, to today's readers, of the "Graveyard School" which flourished in England in the mid C18 and which contributed significantly to the moods, atmospherics, and sensibilities of the Gothic novel.

Sites:

The Thomas Gray Archive

A rich web resource, including annotated etexts, a biography, a detailed chronology, and more. The best Gray site on the web.

Biographical essay

[Literary Encyclopedia]

Thomas Gray

From Samuel Johnson's Lives of the English Poets site. [Kathleen Nulton Kemmerer, Penn State-Hazelton]

Thomas Gray

Another etext of the biographical sketch of Gray and a discussion of his work in Samuel Johnson's Lives of the Poets.

Biographical note

[Wikipedia]

Biographical note

[Columbia Encyclopedia, Bartleby]

Brief biographical note

[EnglishVerse.com]

Brief biographical note

[Gothic Labyrinth]

Brief biographical note

[John W. Cousins, A Short Biographical Dictionary of English Literature, 1910]

The Thomas Gray page

Brief selected bibliography. [San Antonio College LitWeb]

Gray Hyper-Concordance

Part of the The Victorian Literary Studies Archive, this concordance allows you to search the etext of the "Elegy....".

Thoman Gray's Grave

In Stoke Poges, Buckinghamshire. [Poets' Graves]

Portraits

[National Portrait Gallery, London]

Etexts:

"Elegy Written in a Country Churchyard" (15 February 1751)

This is Gray's most well-known work; it's a major work of the C18, is widely anthologized, and catches well the sense of melancholy and memento mori that characterizes the Graveyard School, and to which so many C18 readers and writers were drawn.

- at Thomas Gray Archive
- at U Toronto
- at Bartleby.com
- audio version, read by Anton Lesser, at Norton Topics Online (11MB)

"The Curse Upon Edward"

An example of the political Gothic.

"On the Death of a Favourite Cat, Drowned in a Tub of Gold Fishes"

- at Bartleby.com
- at Thomas Gray Archive - The "Elegy," "On a Favourite Cat, Drowned in a Tub of Gold Fishes," "The Curse Upon Edward," and "Ode on a Distant Prospect of Eton College"

The Bartleby etexts collected on one page. [Poet's Corner]

"The Fatal Sisters. An Ode" [Thomas Gray Archive]

"On the Death of Richard West" [U Toronto]

Books:

The above and more are collected in the Everyman Paperback Classics edition of Gray's poetry:

click the cover image for more info from amazon.com