B.A.

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Biography

Born at Farnham in Surrey, Toplady took an M.A. at Trinity College, Dublin, and proceeded to holy orders in the Anglican church in 1762. He became vicar of Broad Hembury six years later. George Lawton wrote the biography in Within the Rock of Ages: The Life and Work of Augustus Montague Toplady (Cambridge: James Clarke, 1983; BV 330 T6 L3 Emmanuel College Library). The parson's dairy survives and was published in 1987 (BX 5199 T6A35 1987 Robarts Library).

  • Pollard, Arthur. "Toplady, Augustus Montague (1740–1778)." Oxford Dictionary of National Biography. Ed. H. C. G. Matthew and Brian Harrison. Oxford: OUP, 2004. Online ed. Ed. Lawrence Goldman. Oct. 2005.
Degree
Biography
  • Sambrook, James. "Tickell, Thomas (1685–1740)." Oxford Dictionary of National Biography. Ed. H. C. G. Matthew and Brian Harrison. Oxford: OUP, 2004. Online ed. Ed. Lawrence Goldman. Jan. 2008.
Degree
Biography

Born March 3, 1878, in London, Edward Thomas had his education at St. Paul's School and Lincoln College, Oxford University, from which he graduated in 1900 with a history degree. Having married Helen Noble in 1899 and with a baby son, Merfyn, to support, Thomas became a professional writer. In his brief 15-year career he produced over two dozen books and many dozens of reviews. He focused on local history and literary figures. His books dealt with such authors as George Borrow, William Cobbett, John Dyer, George Herbert, Richard Jefferies, John Keats, Christopher Marlowe, Walter Pater, and Algernon Charles Swinburne. As his family grew with the birth of daughters Bronwen (1902) and Myfanwy (1910), so did his financial problems. He intermittently fell ill from 1903 onward. Thomas only began writing poems in late 1914 after a visit from Robert Frost. A pseudonym Edward Eastaway, used in Six Poems (1916), enabled him to isolate poetry from his professional writing. In 1915 his two years of war service began when he joined the Artists' Rifles. After spending some months as a map-reading instructor at Hare Hall Camp in Romford, he became an officer cadet and was commissioned as Second Lieutenant, 244 Siege Battery, R. G. A., and volunteered for overseas duty in late 1916. Just before he left England he looked over the proofs of his contributions to An Annual of New Poetry. Thomas died from a shell explosion on April 9, 1917, at Ronville, just as the Arras offensive started. The diary he carried held a picture of Helen.

  • Eckert, Robert Paul. Edward Thomas, A Biography and a Bibliography (London: Dent, 1937). PR 6039 H55Z7 Robarts Library
  • Kirkham, Michael. The Imagination of Edward Thomas (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1986). PR 6039 H55Z745 Robarts Library
  • Longley, E. "Thomas, (Philip) Edward (1878–1917)." Oxford Dictionary of National Biography. Ed. H. C. G. Matthew and Brian Harrison. Oxford: OUP, 2004. Online ed. Ed. Lawrence Goldman. Oct. 2009.
  • Thomas, Edward. Six poems by Edward Eastaway ([Flansham, England]: J. Guthrie at the Pear Tree Press, [between 1916 and 1921]. end ovs T464 A155 1916b Fisher Rare Book Library
  • --. Poems (London: Selwyn & Blount, 1917). PR 6039 H55P6 Robarts Library
  • --. Last poems (London: Selwyn & Blount, 1918). PR 6039 H55L3 Robarts Library
  • --. Poems and Last Poems, ed. Edna Longley (London and Glasgow: Collins, 1973). PR 6039 H55 A17 York University Library
  • --. Collected Poems, ed. R. George Thomas (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1978). PR 6039 H55A17 1978 Robarts Library
  • --. Poems by Edward Thomas ("Edward Eastaway") with an introduction by Myfanwy Thomas and reproduction of a letter written by Edward Thomas (London: Department of Printed Books, Imperial War Museum, 1997). PR 6039 .H55A17 1997 Robarts Library
  • Thomas, R. George. Edward Thomas: A Portrait (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1985). PR 6039 .H55 Z89 Robarts Library
Degree
Biography

Born in Lawrence, Massachusetts, and raised in Worcester, Thayer graduated magna cum laude from Harvard in philosophy in 1885 after editing the Harvard Lampoon. Its business manager, William Randolph Hearst, hired Thayer as humour columnist for the San Francisco Examiner 1886-88. His last piece, dated June 3, 1888, was a ballad entitled Casey. Although it made him famous, and Thayer recited it at a Harvard class reunion in 1895 and contributed several other comic poems for Hearst's New York Journal a year later, Thayer had a low opinion of the worth of his verse and turned to make his livelihood by overseeing his family's mills in Worcester. He moved to Santa Barbara in 1912, where he married Rosalind Buel Hammett and retired. Martin Gardner gives a brief life of Thayer in Casey at the Bat (2nd edn.: Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1984; PS 3014 T3 C332 1984 Robarts Library).

Degree
Biography

Born near Dublin on April 16, 1871, John Millington Synge studied at Trinity College Dublin. When he was travelling in Europe, he met W. B. Yeats in Paris in 1896, who advised him to return to the Aran Islands to find the well-springs of his writing. Synge did so and published The Aran Islands in 1906. The subject of this book -- Irish peasant life -- formed those plays that made him the leading dramatist of his time. These included The Shadow of the Glen (1903), Riders to the Sea (1904), The Well of the Saints (1905), The Playboy of the Western World (1907), The Tinker's Wedding (1909), and Deirdre of the Sorrows, incomplete at Synge's death from Hodgkin's disease (1910). All were performed at the Abbey Theatre, the principal actress of which, Maire O'Neill, became engaged to Synge shortly before his death.

  • Greene, David H., and Edward M. Stephens. J. M. Synge, 1871-1909, rev. edn. (New York: New York University Press, 1989; PR 5533 G7 1989 Robarts Library)
  • Kopper, Edward A. John Millington Synge: a reference guide (Boston: G. K. Hall, 1979; Z 8857 .8 K66 Robarts Library)
  • McCormack, W. J. "Synge, (Edmund) John Millington (1871–1909)." Oxford Dictionary of National Biography. Ed. H. C. G. Matthew and Brian Harrison. Oxford: OUP, 2004. Online ed. Ed. Lawrence Goldman. May 2010.
  • Synge, J. M. Collected works, 4 vols. (London: Oxford University Press, 1962-68; del S993 A1 1962-68 Fisher Rare Book Library)
  • The collected letters of John Millington Synge, ed. Ann Saddlemyer (New York: Oxford University Press, 1983-84; PR 5533 A44 1983 Robarts Library)
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Biography
  • Probyn, Clive. "Swift, Jonathan (1667–1745)." Oxford Dictionary of National Biography. Online ed. Ed. Lawrence Goldman. Oxford: OUP, 2004.
Degree
Biography
  • Probyn, Clive. "Swift, Jonathan (1667–1745)." Oxford Dictionary of National Biography. Online ed. Ed. Lawrence Goldman. Oxford: OUP, 2004.
Degree
Biography
  • Forey, Margaret. "Strode, William (1601?–1645)." Oxford Dictionary of National Biography. Ed. H. C. G. Matthew and Brian Harrison. Oxford: OUP, 2004. Online ed. Ed. Lawrence Goldman. Jan. 2008.
Degree
Biography
  • Morgan, John. "Sprat, Thomas (bap. 1635, d. 1713)." Oxford Dictionary of National Biography. Ed. H. C. G. Matthew and Brian Harrison. Oxford: OUP, 2004. Online ed. Ed. Lawrence Goldman. Jan. 2008.