Graveyard poets is a term applied to those 18th‐century poets who wrote melancholy, reflective works, often set in graveyards, on the theme of human mortality.[1] Prominent among them were Thomas Gray, Edward Young, Robert Blair and Thomas Parnell. Their work is generally considered to be a significant influence on the later development of the genre of Gothic literature.[2]

The earliest poem attributed to the Graveyard School is Thomas Parnell’s A Night-Piece on Death (1721),[3] in which King Death gives an address from his kingdom of bones:

When men my scythe and darts supply
How great a King of Fears am I!

Perhaps the best remembered example of the genre today is Thomas Gray’s Elegy Written in a Country Churchyard, published in 1751.[4]

References

  1.  
  2.  
  3. pp. 10–11
  4. pp. 392, 401

Bibliography