Young, Edward

(1683-1765)

   Born at Upham, near Winchester, Hampshire, where his father was rector, he was educated at Winchester College and graduated bachelor of civil law (1714) and doctor of civil law (1719) from New College, Oxford. From 1730 until his death, Young was rector at Welwyn, Hertfordshire. There he wrote his masterpiece, Complaint, or Night Thoughts on Life, Death, and Immortality (1742-1745), a long, meditative essay in blank verse inspired by the successive deaths of his step-daughter (1736), her husband (1740), and Young's wife (1741); this work is an example of the graveyard genre. The Complete Works, Poetry and Prose, of the Rev. Edward Young appeared in 1854. Young's works were popular in Europe, augmented by the prose work, the Conjectures on Original Composition (1759). Some of his other publications: The Last Day, 1714. Bursiris, 1719 (tragedy). Paraphrase on Part of the Book of Job, 1719. The Revenge (the naval ship), 1721. The Universal Passion, 1725-1728 (a series of satires). The Sea-piece, 1730. Resignation, 1762. Some of his poems: "Epistles to Mr. Pope," "Ode to the King," "The Foreign Address," "The Instalment," "The Lament of the Damned in Hell."

   Sources: Dictionary of National Biography. Electronic Edition 1.1. Oxford University Press, 1997. Encyclopædia Britannica Ultimate Reference Suite DVD, 2006. English Poetry: Author Search. Chadwyck-Healey Ltd., 1995 (http://www.lib.utexas.edu:8080/search/epoetry/author.html). English Romantic Poetry and Prose. Russell Noyes, ed. Oxford University Press. 1956. Mark Akenside, James Macpherson, Edward Young. S.H. Clark, ed. Fyfield Books, 1994. Microsoft Encarta 2006 (DVD). Microsoft Corporation, 2006. The National Portrait Gallery (www.npg.org.uk). Samuel Johnson's Lives of the English Poets, 17791781 (http://www2.hn.psu.edu/Faculty/KKemmerer/ poets/preface.htm). 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. The Oxford Book of Christian Verse. Lord David Cecil, ed. Oxford University Press, 1940. The Oxford Book of Satirical Verse. Geoffrey Grigson, ed. Oxford University Press, 1980. The Oxford Companion to English Literature. 6th edition. Margaret Drabble, ed. Oxford University Press, 2000.