White, Gilbert

(1720-1793)

   The son of a barrister, he was born at the parsonage of Selborne, Hampshire, where his grandfather was vicar. His education was at the grammar school at Basingstoke, then kept by Thomas Warton, the elder (see entry). He graduated B.A. from Oriel College, Oxford, in 1743, and was made fellow in 1744. He was ordained in 1751 and had a number of posts before becoming curate at Selborne, where he remained until he died. White's passion was natural history, and his Calendar of Flora and the Garden (1765) was followed by the Naturalist's Journal (1795). The Natural History and Antiquities of Selborne (1789) was the first work on natural history to attain the status of an English classic. His house in Selborne, the Wakes, now contains the Gilbert White Museum, as well as the Oates Memorial Museum, commemorating Lawrence Oates, the British Antarctic explorer. White was buried on the north side of the chancel of Selborne Church. Some of his poems: "A Shower of Cobwebs," "On the Dark, Still, Dry, Warm Weather," "The Naturalist's Summer-Evening Walk," "A Harvest Scene," "The Invitation to Selborne."

   Sources: Dictionary of National Biography. Electronic Edition 1.1. Oxford University Press, 1997. Encyclopædia Britannica Ultimate Reference Suite DVD, 2006. Microsoft Encarta 2006 (DVD). Microsoft Corporation, 2006. Poem hunter (www.poemhunter.com). 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 New Oxford Book of Eighteenth Century Verse. Roger Lonsdale, ed. Oxford University Press, 1984. The Oxford Companion to English Literature. 6th edition. Margaret Drabble, ed. Oxford University Press, 2000.