author
William Somerville
1675–1742
An English country gentleman and poet, he is best remembered for turning his love of rural life and field sports into lively, influential verse. His best-known work, The Chace, helped shape the English georgic tradition and kept his name alive long after his own century.
2 Audiobooks
The Poetical Works of Addison; Gay's Fables; and Somerville's Chase With Memoirs and Critical Dissertations, by the Rev. George Gilfillan
by Joseph Addison, John Gay, William Somerville
The chase : a poem
by William Somerville
About the author
Born on September 2, 1675, William Somervile was educated at Winchester College and New College, Oxford, and later studied law at the Middle Temple. After his father's death, he settled at the family estate at Edstone in Warwickshire and lived much of his life as a country gentleman.
That life fed directly into his writing. Somervile wrote in several genres, but he is especially remembered for The Chace (1735), a poem on hunting that drew on his close knowledge of the countryside and became his most famous work. Readers have long noted the way his poetry blends practical observation, affection for rural England, and a polished Augustan style.
He was part of the literary world of his day while still remaining deeply rooted in local life. Although financial troubles clouded his later years, his work endured, and he is still remembered as a distinctive 18th-century English poet whose verse gave country sports and rural experience an unusually vivid literary form.