author
William Lisle Bowles
1762–1850
An English poet, critic, and clergyman remembered for sonnets that helped shape early Romantic taste, he wrote with a gentle, reflective voice that appealed strongly to readers like Coleridge. His work often turns inward, finding emotion and moral feeling in memory, nature, and ordinary scenes.
2 Audiobooks
The Poetical Works of William Lisle Bowles, Vol. 1 With Memoir, Critical Dissertation, and Explanatory Notes by George Gilfillan
by William Lisle Bowles
The Poetical Works of William Lisle Bowles, Vol. 2
by William Lisle Bowles
About the author
Born in Kings Sutton, Northamptonshire, in 1762, William Lisle Bowles was educated at Winchester and Oxford before entering the Church. He went on to serve as vicar of Bremhill in Wiltshire and later became a canon residentiary of Salisbury Cathedral.
Bowles is best known for Fourteen Sonnets (1789), a small volume that earned unusual praise for its sincerity and meditative tone. His poetry favored natural scenery, personal feeling, and quiet reflection, and it became an important influence on early Romantic writers, especially Samuel Taylor Coleridge.
Alongside poetry, Bowles also wrote criticism and antiquarian works. He was an active literary figure well into later life, and although his reputation is now more historical than popular, he remains an important link between 18th-century sensibility and the rise of English Romanticism.