Bowles, William Lisle

(1762-1850)

   Northampton-born Anglican clergyman, poet and critic. Educated at Westminster School and Trinity College, Oxford. His poem of 1783, "Calpe Obsessa, or the Siege of Gibraltar," won him the chancellor's prize for Latin verse. He took Holy Orders and had several church appointments in Wiltshire and Gloucestershire; his final appointment was Bremhill, in Wiltshire, where he remained until near his death. Some of his principal works: Fourteen Sonnets, which by 1794 had been enlarged to 27 sonnets and 13 other poems, 1789. The Battle of the Nile, 1799. The Missionary of the Andes, 1815. The Grave of the Last Saxon, 1822. St. John in Patmos, 1833. Bourne influenced the work of many poets, including Samuel Taylor Coleridge. He was not without his critics, who rose to defend Alexander Pope against Bourne when he attacked Pope's morals and poetic principles, a controversy that dragged on for seven years. Some of his other poems: "At Dover Cliffs," "Distant View of England from the Sea," "Hope," "In Age," "In Youth," "Netley Abbey," "The Butterfly and the Bee," "Time and Grief," "To a Friend."

   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). 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 National Portrait Gallery (www.npg.org.uk). The Oxford Companion to English Literature. 6th edition. Margaret Drabble, ed. Oxford University Press, 2000. The Sonnet: An Antholog y. Robert M. Bender and Charles L. Squier, eds. Washington Square Press, 1987.