author
Edward Young
1683–1765
Best remembered for the haunting poem Night Thoughts, this 18th-century English writer brought grief, faith, and mortality into some of the most widely read verse of his age. He was also a dramatist and Church of England clergyman whose work reached well beyond his own century.
3 Audiobooks
The Poetical Works of Edward Young, Volume 2
by Edward Young
The Revenge: A Tragedy
by Edward Young
About the author
Born in 1683 near Winchester, Edward Young was educated at Winchester College and later at Oxford. Over the course of his career he wrote poetry, plays, and prose, and he also took holy orders, eventually serving as rector of Welwyn.
Young first gained attention through satire and drama, but his lasting fame came from The Complaint: or, Night Thoughts on Life, Death, and Immortality, published in the 1740s. The poem’s meditative blank verse, shaped by personal loss and religious reflection, made it one of the best-known English poems of the century.
He died in 1765, but his reputation endured through readers who were drawn to his serious, emotional style. His work spoke strongly to later writers and helped keep questions of death, faith, and the inner life at the center of English poetry.