Joseph Trapp

Born in Gloucestershire in 1679, Joseph Trapp was educated at Oxford and went on to build a career that mixed church life, scholarship, and public debate. He became known as a poet and pamphleteer at a time when literature and politics were closely intertwined.

Trapp is often noted for serving as the first Professor of Poetry at Oxford, a role that helped secure his place in literary history. Alongside his academic work, he held clerical positions and wrote energetically on religious, political, and literary subjects.

He died in 1747. Though not as widely read today as some of his contemporaries, he remains an interesting figure from the Augustan age: a writer whose career shows how closely poetry, religion, and controversy could be linked in his time.