author
Thomas Warton
1728–1790
Best known for helping shape the study of English literature, this eighteenth-century poet, critic, and scholar brought a deep love of medieval and early English writing to a wider audience. He also served as Poet Laureate late in life, linking serious scholarship with a lasting public literary role.
1 Audiobook
A history of English poetry : an unpublished continuation
by Thomas Warton
About the author
Born in Basingstoke in 1728, Thomas Warton became an English literary historian, critic, and poet whose work helped make the history of English poetry a subject of serious study. Reliable reference sources agree that he was the son of Thomas Warton the elder, the brother of Joseph Warton, and that he was educated at Trinity College, Oxford.
Warton built his reputation both as a creative writer and as a scholar. Britannica identifies him as Poet Laureate from 1785, while Wikipedia and other reference sources note that he is especially remembered for The History of English Poetry, an influential early attempt to trace the development of English verse across centuries. His interests in older English literature, Gothic settings, and antiquarian subjects made him an important bridge between Augustan taste and the sensibilities that would later flower in Romanticism.
He died in Oxford in 1790. Although modern readers may know him less for a single famous poem than for the breadth of his learning, his place in literary history remains secure as one of the figures who helped readers value England's earlier poetic tradition.