The Works of Thomas Lovell Beddoes

by Thomas Lovell Beddoes, Henry W. Donner (Editor)

Reprints the very scarce Oxford edition of Beddoes' Complete Works.

Genres: Poetry

834 pages, Hardcover

First published January 1, 1935

About the author

Thomas Lovell Beddoes was an English poet, dramatist and physician. Born in Clifton, Bristol, England, he was the son of Dr. Thomas Beddoes, a friend of Samuel Taylor Coleridge, and Anna, sister of Maria Edgeworth. He was educated at Charterhouse and Pembroke College, Oxford. He published in 1821 The Improvisatore, which he afterwards endeavoured to suppress. His next venture, a blank-verse drama called The Bride's Tragedy (1822), was published and well reviewed, and won for him the friendship of Barry Cornwall.

Beddoes' work shows a constant preoccupation with death. In 1824, he went to Göttingen to study medicine, motivated by his hope of discovering physical evidence of a human spirit which survives the death of the body. He was expelled, and then went to Würzburg to complete his training. He then wandered about practising his profession, and expounding democratic theories which got him into trouble. He was deported from Bavaria in 1833, and had to leave Zürich, where he had settled, in 1840.

He continued to write, but published nothing.

He led an itinerant life after leaving Switzerland, returning to England only in 1846, before going back to Germany. He became increasingly disturbed, and committed suicide by poison at Basel, in 1849, at the age of 45.

For some time before his death he had been engaged on a drama, Death's Jest Book, which was published in 1850 with a memoir by his friend, T. F. Kelsall. His Collected Poems were published in 1851.

Reviews

[Jeff Holt · Rating 5 out of 5]

IMO, Beddoes is the greatest overlooked author of the 19th, and perhaps any, century. As long as one accepts Beddoes on his own terms, embracing the "prince of morticians" who was also a poet of fragments, then the beauty of lyrical passages that are literally scattered throughout Beddoes' entire works becomes clear. In this particular edition of Beddoes' work, which was reprinted in 1978 by AMS, as well as in Donner's companion work, "Thomas Lovell Beddoes: The Making of a Poet," which also appeared in 1935, Donner sheds light on Beddoes' entire collected poems, including "The Improvisitare" a collection the poet began at 16 and published at 18. We are fortunate to even have that particular collection, as Beddoes craftily attempted to destroy every extant copy, and only half a dozen remain. But more to the point, Donner's edition, which is very scarce, helps bring alive these deathly poems, as it has a full critical apparatus and every line Beddoes wrote. If you get a chance, snag this one!

[Mark · Rating 5 out of 5]

Reprints the very scarce Oxford edition of Beddoes' Complete Works.