Crabbe, George

(1754-1832)

   Born in the village of Aldeburgh, Suffolk, where his father worked as a customs official. He was chiefly self-educated, largely through his father's Martin's Philosophical Magazine, which he bought for the mathematical part; the poems he handed over to the son. He was apprenticed to a surgeon at fourteen. At twenty-four he moved to London to become a writer. Edmund Burke befriended him and helped him get his poem "The Library" published in 1781. He took holy orders and became curate of Aldeburgh in 1781, then chaplain to the Duke of Rutland at Belvoir Castle in 1782. He practiced medicine and helped the poor of his various parishes. Many of his poems are long and contain within them sketches of people taken from the Register of Births, Marriage, and Deaths. Some of his publications: Inebriety, 1775. The Candidate, 1780. The Village, 1783. Newspaper, 1785. Poems, 1807. The Parish Register, 1807. The Borough, 1810. Tales of the Hall, 1819. Some of his other poems: "Phoebe Dawson," "Resurrection," "Sir Eustace Grey," "Tales," "The Ancient Mansion," "The Whistling Boy," "The World of Dreams."

   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 Poetical Works of Crabbe, Heber, and Pollok. Lippincott, Grambo. 1854.