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Thomas Lovell Beddoes
(30 June 1803 - 26 January 1849) U.K.

Thomas Lovell Beddoes

Physician, poet, dramatist

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Thomas Lovell Beddoes was born into a fairly well off family who lived in the fashionable Bristol district of Clifton. His father, Dr Thomas Beddoes, was a somewhat controversial physician who filled the home with a range of items that you might normally find in an operating theatre. He died when Thomas was only 5 years old. Being surrounded by medical accoutrements and, probably, grisly exhibits, will have certainly influenced the thinking of a growing boy so it is hardly surprising that he grew up the way he did.

He was educated at at Charterhouse in London, and then went up to Pembroke College, Oxford. At the age of 18 Beddoes published his first collection of poetry, The Improvisatore (1821) that had very little impact and which he afterwards endeavoured to suppress. The following year, he published a tragic play, in blank-verse, called The Brides' Tragedy (1822) and this received much critical acclaim. It has often been said that Thomas Beddoes was striving to recreate "the grandeur of Elizabethan verse-drama" but it seems that his outlook was a little too dark for any hope of success in that direction. He was constantly preoccupied with death and, in truth, never far from a state of madness.

Beddoes' work shows a constant preoccupation with death. In 1824, he went to Göttingen to study medicine, motivated by his hope of discovering physical evidence of a human spirit which survives the death of the body. He was expelled, and then went to Würzburg to complete his training. He then wandered about practising his profession, and expounding democratic theories which got him into trouble. He was deported from Bavaria in 1833, and had to leave Zürich, where he had settled, in 1840.

He continued to write, but published nothing. He led an itinerant life after leaving Switzerland, returning to England only in 1846, before going back to Germany. He became increasingly disturbed, and committed suicide by poison at Basel, at the age of 45.

For some time before his death he had been engaged on a drama, Death's Jest Book, which was published in 1850 with a memoir by his friend, T. F. Kelsall. His Collected Poems were published in 1851. Critics have faulted Beddoes as a dramatist. According to Arthur Symons, "of really dramatic power he had nothing. He could neither conceive a coherent plot, nor develop a credible situation." His plots are convoluted, and such was his obsession with the questions posed by death that his characters lack individuation; they all struggle with the same ideas that vexed Beddoes.

But his poetry is "full of thought and richness of diction", in the words of John William Cousin, who praised Beddoes' short pieces such as "If thou wilt ease thine heart" (from Death's Jest-Book, Act II) and "If there were dreams to sell" ("Dream-Pedlary") as "masterpieces of intense feeling exquisitely expressed". Lytton Strachey referred to Beddoes as "the last Elizabethan", and said that he was distinguished not for his "illuminating views on men and things, or for a philosophy", but for the quality of his expression.

Philip B. Anderson said the lyrics of Death's Jest Book, exemplified by "Sibylla's Dirge" and "The Swallow Leaves Her Nest", are "Beddoes' best work. These lyrics display a delicacy of form, a voluptuous horror, an imagistic compactness and suggestiveness, and, occasionally, a grotesque comic power that are absolutely unique."

Thomas Lovell Beddoes was a curious character whose short life spanned the first half of the 19th century, thus causing him to be referred to, in some literary circles, as "the last Elizabethan" who might be distinguished from other writers of the time by the "quality of his expression". He was a poet and dramatist and some have called him a great writer. Opinions are very much divided though on that particular description. It may have inspired him, or hindered him, but the fact that he was exposed, at a very young age, to his father's morbid collection of anatomical paraphernalia most certainly gave him a deep interest in all things macabre.

He forged a lifelong friendship with a lawyer called Thomas Forbes Kelsall and, following the poet's early death in 1849, it was Kelsall who took on the role of promoting his friend's work. Collected Poems was published in 1851.

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Source: Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia and https://mypoeticside.com/

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