Thomas gray biography pdf download

English poet and classical scholar (–)

For other uses, see Thomas Gray (disambiguation).

Thomas Gray (26 December – 30 July ) was an English poet, letter-writer, and classical scholar at Cambridge University, being a fellow first of Peterhouse then of Pembroke College.

He is widely known for his Elegy Written in a Country Churchyard, published in ^[1]

Gray was a self-critical writer who published only 13 poems in his lifetime, despite being very popular. He was even offered the position of Poet Laureate in after the death of Colley Cibber, though he declined.^[2]

Early life and education

Thomas Gray was born in Cornhill, London.

His father, Philip Gray, was a scrivener and his mother, Dorothy Antrobus, was a milliner.^[3] He was the fifth of twelve children, and the only one to survive infancy.^[4] An newspaper article including a biography of Gray suggests that Gray almost died in infancy due to suffocation from a full