author
Henry Kirke White
1785–1806
A gifted English poet and hymn-writer, he won admiration for the promise and emotional intensity of work created before his death at just twenty-one. His brief life has long given his poems an added sense of urgency and poignancy.
1 Audiobook
The Poetical Works of Henry Kirk White : With a Memoir by Sir Harris Nicolas
by Henry Kirke White
About the author
Born in Nottingham on March 21, 1785, he was the son of a butcher and was first intended for trade rather than a literary life. Even so, he pursued serious study on his own, showed unusual early talent, and eventually prepared for Cambridge, where his abilities attracted wider attention.
He is remembered as an English poet and hymn-writer whose writing combines youthful ambition, religious feeling, and melancholy reflection. Although he died in Cambridge on October 19, 1806, at only twenty-one, his poems continued to be read after his death and helped secure his reputation as one of the strikingly gifted young literary figures of the Romantic period.
Part of his lasting appeal comes from that sense of unrealized promise: readers encounter not only finished poems, but the story of a writer whose life ended before his talent had fully matured. That mixture of sincerity, intelligence, and brevity of life has kept interest in his work alive for generations.