author
Mark Akenside
1721–1770
An 18th-century English poet and physician, he is remembered for blending big philosophical ideas with polished verse. His best-known work, The Pleasures of Imagination, helped make him one of the notable literary voices of the Enlightenment.
1 Audiobook
The Poetical Works of Mark Akenside
by Mark Akenside
About the author
Born in Newcastle upon Tyne in 1721, Mark Akenside grew up in a dissenting family and was educated first for the ministry before turning to medicine. He studied in Edinburgh and later at Leiden, building a career that ran alongside his literary ambitions.
Akenside became widely known with The Pleasures of Imagination (1744), a long philosophical poem that brought together poetry, aesthetics, and moral reflection. Readers in his own time admired its ambition and learned style, and it remains the work most closely associated with his name.
Although poetry brought him early fame, he went on to establish himself as a physician in London and became a Fellow of both the Royal Society and the Royal College of Physicians. He died in 1770, leaving behind a reputation as a writer who joined Enlightenment thought with an elevated poetic voice.