Trapp, Joseph

(1679-1747)

   Born at Cherrington, Gloucestershire, the son of the local clergyman, he was educated at Wadham College, Oxford, and incorporated M.A. of Cambridge (1714). While at Oxford, he wrote poems on the deaths of the young Duke of Gloucester, King William, Prince George of Denmark, and Queen Anne, and has the honor being the first professor poetry at Oxford (1708-1718). Between 1711 and 1736 he published three volumes of Prælectiones Poeticæ, and an English translation by the Rev. William Clarke and William Bowyer was published in 1742. He wrote several tracts defending the Anglican Church against Methodism and the Church of Rome, for which Oxford made him a doctor of divinity (1727). Two volumes of his Sermons on Moral and Practical Subjects were published in 1752. He died at Harlington, Middlesex. Some of his other publications: Ædes Badmintonianæ, 1701. A Prologue to the University of Oxford, 1703. Peace, 1713. The Works of Virgil, 1731. Thoughts Upon the Four Last Things, 1745. Some of his other poems: "Dark to Futurity, in Doubt, and Fear," "Epigram to King George," "Paraphrase Upon Psalm 137," "Virgil's Georgicks," "Virgil's Tomb, Naples 1741."

   Sources: Dictionary of National Biography. Electronic Edition 1.1. Oxford University Press, 1997. English Poetry: Author Search. Chadwyck-Healey Ltd., 1995 (http://www.lib.utexas.edu:8080/search/epoetry/author.html). Oxford Professors of Poetry (http://www.poetsgraves.co.uk/oxford_ professors_of_poetry.htm). Stanford University Libraries and Academic Information Resources (http://library.stanford.edu). The Columbia Granger's Index to Poetry. 11th ed. The Columbia Granger's World of Poetry, Columbia University Press, 2005 (http://www.columbiagrangers.org). The Faber Book of Comic Verse. Michael Roberts and Janet Adam Smith, eds. Faber and Faber, 1978.