William Lisle Bowles

author

William Lisle Bowles

1762–1850

An early Romantic poet and country clergyman, remembered above all for sonnets that helped bring quieter feeling and natural scenery back to English poetry. His work deeply impressed young readers such as Samuel Taylor Coleridge and helped shape the mood of early Romantic verse.

2 Audiobooks

The Poetical Works of William Lisle Bowles, Vol. 1 With Memoir, Critical Dissertation, and Explanatory Notes by George Gilfillan

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

The Poetical Works of William Lisle Bowles, Vol. 2

by William Lisle Bowles

About the author

Born in Kings Sutton, Northamptonshire, on September 24, 1762, William Lisle Bowles became known as an English poet, critic, and clergyman. He is best remembered for Fourteen Sonnets (1789), later expanded as Elegiac Sonnets, a book admired for its plain feeling, reflective tone, and close attention to landscape.

Bowles was educated at Winchester College and Trinity College, Oxford, and he spent much of his life in the Church of England. Alongside his parish work, he continued to publish poetry and prose, including literary criticism that took part in the lively debates of his age.

Though he is often described as a minor poet, Bowles had an influence larger than that label suggests. His sonnets helped reopen English poetry to personal emotion and the quiet power of nature, making him an important bridge between 18th-century verse and the Romantic poets who followed. He died in Salisbury, Wiltshire, on April 7, 1850.