18th Century
19th Century
A01=George Crabbe
Author_George Crabbe
Category=DCF
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Product details
- ISBN 9780856356216
- Weight: 202g
- Dimensions: 130 x 190mm
- Publication Date: 01 Jan 1996
- Publisher: Carcanet Press Ltd
- Publication City/Country: GB
- Product Form: Paperback
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"Though nature's sternest painter yet the best" Byron
George Crabbe (1754-1832) arrived late on the Augustan scene. Born in the same decade as Burns and Blake, he outlived Keats by more than ten years. His father was a warehouse-keeper in Aldeburgh, Suffolk. Schooled in Bungay and Stowmarket, he was apprenticed to an apothecary. In 1779 he went to London as a literary adventurer, arriving without introductions. Edmund Burke became his patron and transformed his fortunes. The Village (1783),and after a silence The Parish Register (1807), The Borough (1810) and Tales (1812), his main works followed.
Crabbe wanted his readers to feel his writing - accounts of rural and provincial life, of individuals and communities, of landscapes - not only as narrative but in circumstantial detail - some of it harsh and shocking. Peter Grimes is his most famous character, one whom Benjamin Britten found irresistible. 'It is worth registering from the outset,' Jem Poster says, 'the enduring intimacy of Crabbe's contact with the world, the sheer physicality of his grasp of things: the strengths of his poetry are more easily understood if we can visualise him actually grubbing at the slimy roots of the marshplants he so vividly described, delivering a neighbour's child, or assisting his father by piling butter-casks in a quayside warehouse'.
George Crabbe (1754-1832) arrived late on the Augustan scene. Born in the same decade as Burns and Blake, he outlived Keats by more than ten years. His father was a warehouse-keeper in Aldeburgh, Suffolk. Schooled in Bungay and Stowmarket, he was apprenticed to an apothecary. In 1779 he went to London as a literary adventurer, arriving without introductions. Edmund Burke became his patron and transformed his fortunes. The Village (1783),and after a silence The Parish Register (1807), The Borough (1810) and Tales (1812), his main works followed.
Crabbe wanted his readers to feel his writing - accounts of rural and provincial life, of individuals and communities, of landscapes - not only as narrative but in circumstantial detail - some of it harsh and shocking. Peter Grimes is his most famous character, one whom Benjamin Britten found irresistible. 'It is worth registering from the outset,' Jem Poster says, 'the enduring intimacy of Crabbe's contact with the world, the sheer physicality of his grasp of things: the strengths of his poetry are more easily understood if we can visualise him actually grubbing at the slimy roots of the marshplants he so vividly described, delivering a neighbour's child, or assisting his father by piling butter-casks in a quayside warehouse'.
George Crabbe was born in 1754 in the village of Aldeburgh, Suffolk, England. He apprenticed to a doctor at the age of 14 but left his village and medical career in 1780 to pursue his literary interests in London. With the help of Edmund Burke, Crabbe published The Library (1781) and became a clergyman. Writing out of the Augustan tradition, he used primarily heroic couplets. Crabbe's poetry was predominantly in the form of heroic couplets, and has been described as unsentimental in its depiction of provincial life and society.
