X-Nico

9 unusual facts about William Cowper


A1010 road

The route is featured in William Cowper's 1782 comic ballad The Diverting History of John Gilpin, which describes the chaotic progress of the hero along the road from London to Ware and back, failing twice to stop his borrowed horse at his intended destination, the Bell in Edmonton.

Carlos Wilcox

He wrote a poem, The Age of Benevolence, which was left unfinished, and which was clearly influenced by the work of William Cowper.

Elias Weekes

Weekes was the Colonial Treasurer of New South Wales in the second government of William Cowper between April and October 1859.

Humphrey S. Milford

Milford himself edited volumes of works of Robert Browning, William Cowper, and Leigh Hunt; and was principal editor of The Oxford Book of Regency Verse (later The Oxford Book of Romantic Verse) and a moving force behind the Oxford Dictionary of Quotations.

Lyricist

The English composer Ralph Vaughan Williams famously set existing poems, by men like William Cowper and Charles Wesley, to traditional folk tunes to create hymns, many of which he published in the English Hymnal.

Mysterious Ways

"Mysterious Ways," hymn by William Cowper (1731-1800), originally titled "Light Shining out of Darkness"

Olney, Maryland

Early residents Sarah Brooke and Dr. Charles Farquhar were devotees of the English poet William Cowper, and named their home after the poet's hometown.

Pype Hayes Hall

The poet Robert Southey (1774–1843) worked at the Hall on his 1833 biography of William Cowper, a friend of the Bagots.

William Cowper

During this period he started his translations of Homer's Iliad and Odyssey into blank verse, and his versions (published in 1791) were the most significant English renderings of these epic poems since those of Alexander Pope earlier in the century, although later critics have faulted Cowper's Homer for being too much in the mould of John Milton.


Bardolatry

Shaw's distaste for this attitude to Shakespeare is anticipated by William Cowper's attack on Garrick's whole festival as blasphemous in his poem The Task (1785).

John Cowper Powys

Powys was born in Shirley, Derbyshire, in 1872, the son of the Reverend Charles Francis Powys (1843–1923), who was vicar of Montacute, Somerset, for thirty-two years, and Mary Cowper Johnson, a descendent of the poet William Cowper.

John Gilpin

John Gilpin (18th century) was a based on a real-life character whose exploits became legendary and featured in a well-known comic ballad of 1782 by William Cowper entitled The Diverting History of John Gilpin.

Lemuel Francis Abbott

Abbott painted portraits of many figures of the day including leading seamen such as Admiral Nelson, Admiral Sir Robert Calder, Rear-Admiral Sir Thomas Pasley and Captain William Locker, astronomer Sir William Herschel, poet William Cowper, artists Francesco Bartolozzi and Joseph Nollekens, entrepreneur Matthew Boulton and industrialist John Wilkinson amongst others.


see also

Anglican Diocese of Armidale

Calrossy Anglican School, Tamworth, incorporating Calrossy Anglican School for Girls (founded 1919), William Cowper Anglican Boys High School and William Cowper Primary School

Mary Cowper

In May 1707 Queen Anne in Council named William Cowper the first Lord High Chancellor of Great Britain and he was later appointed one of the Lords Justices responsible for governing the country until George I arrived in England after Queen Anne's death.

Spencer Cowper

Cowpers eldest son William Cowper was clerk of parliament and the father of General William Cowper of Hertingfordbury Park (MP).