author
Thomas Purney
b. 1695
An early 18th-century English poet and clergyman, he is remembered as a lively minor literary figure who also served as the Ordinary of Newgate, ministering to prisoners in London’s most notorious jail.
1 Audiobook
A Full Enquiry into the Nature of the Pastoral (1717)
by Thomas Purney
About the author
Born in 1695, Thomas Purney was an English poet, critic, and clergyman associated with the literary world of the early 1700s. Reliable sources connect him with Merchant Taylors’ School and Clare College, Cambridge, where he earned his B.A. before taking holy orders.
Purney published Pastorals in 1716 and followed it with A Full Enquiry into the Nature of the Pastoral in 1717, a work that kept his name alive among scholars of Augustan poetry and literary criticism. His writing may not be widely read today, but it still interests readers who enjoy the debates and experiments of 18th-century English verse.
He also served as the Ordinary of Newgate, the prison chaplain attached to Newgate Prison, a role that placed him close to the harsh realities of criminal justice in Georgian London. Sources agree that illness forced him to stop acting in that post in the 1720s; his death is generally given as 1727, though some records show uncertainty.