author
Joseph Trapp
1679–1747
An English clergyman, poet, and polemicist, he became Oxford’s first Professor of Poetry and built a career at the lively intersection of literature, religion, and public debate. His writing ranges from verse and drama to sermons, criticism, and sharp political pamphlets.
2 Audiobooks
The Preface to the Aeneis of Virgil (1718)
by Joseph Trapp
About the author
Born in Gloucestershire in 1679, Joseph Trapp was educated at Wadham College, Oxford, where he went on to become a fellow. Early poems, Latin verse, and plays helped make his name, and in 1708 he was appointed the first Professor of Poetry at Oxford — a role that marks his place in literary history even now.
Trapp wrote across an unusually wide range of forms. Besides poetry and drama, he produced sermons, literary lectures, translations, and controversial pamphlets. His Lectures on Poetry are among the works he is best remembered for, showing his interest not just in writing verse but in explaining how poetry works and why it matters.
He was also a strong High Church voice, and that side of his life shaped much of his public writing. In London as well as Oxford, he became known as a combative religious and political author whose career joined scholarship with argument. He died in 1747.