The son of a hatter, William Collins was friends with Joseph Warton and William Whitehead at Winchester (1733-40) where he composed his first published poems, the Persian Eclogues. He entered Queen's College Oxford in 1740 (B.A. 1744) and seems to have planned a career as a poet. Collins was an early admirer of Elizabethan poetry; Thomas Warton refers to a lost collection black-letter treasures. Removing to London Collins attracted the attention and encouragement of James Thomson and Samuel Johnson. In 1749 he received a timely inheritance, only to be stricken with a debilitating disease that left him incapable of writing.
TEXT RECORDS:
1738On Hercules.
1742Eclogue the First. Selim; or, the Shepherd's Moral.
1742Eclogue the Fourth. Agib and Secander; or, the Fugitives.
1742Eclogue the Second. Hassan; or, the Camel-driver.
1742Eclogue the Third. Abra; or, the Georgian Sultana.
1742Persian Eclogues: The Preface.
1745Ode to a Lady, on the Death of Col. Charles Ross, in the Action of Fontenoy. Written May, 1745.
1745 ca.[Lines Addressed to a Friend about to visit Italy.]
1746Ode on the Poetical Character.
1746Ode to Evening.
1746Ode to Fear.
1746Ode to Liberty.
1746Ode to Mercy.
1746Ode to Peace.
1746Ode to Pity.
1746Ode to Simplicity.
1746Ode, written in the Beginning of the Year 1746. [How Sleep the Brave.]
1746The Manners. An Ode.
1746The Passions. An Ode for Music.
1747Of the essential Excellencies in Poetry.
1749An Ode on the Popular Superstitions of the Highlands.
1749Ode occasion'd by the Death of Mr. Thomson.
1749Superstitions Ode: The London Text.
PUBLICATIONS:
Persian eclogues, written for originally for the entertainment of the ladies of Taurus and now first translated. 1742.
Verses humbly address'd to Sir Thomas Hanmer on his edition of Shakespear's works, by a gentleman of Oxford. 1743.
Odes on several descriptive and allegorical subjects. 1746.
Ode occasion'd by the death of Mr. Thomson. 1749.
The passions, an ode. 1750.
Poetical works, ed. John Langhorne. 1765.
An ode on the popular superstitions of the Highlands of Scotland, considered as the subject of poetry. 1788.
Poetical works, ed. Anna Laetitia Barbauld, 1797.
Poetical works, ed. by Alexander Dyce. 1827.
Poetical works of Goldsmith, Collins, and T. Warton, ed. G. Gilfillan. 1854.
Poetical works, ed. W. Moy Thomas. 1858.
Poems, ed. W. C. Bronson. 1898.
Poetical works of Gray and Collins, ed. Austin Lane Poole. 1917.
Poems, ed. Edmund Blunden. 1929.
Drafts and fragments of verse, ed. J. S. Cunningham. 1956.
Poems of Gray, Collins, and Goldsmith, ed. R. Lonsdale. 1969.
Works, ed. Richard Wendorf and Charles Ryskamp. 1979.
PROFILE AND
ASSOCIATES:
English
Anglican
Winchester College
Queen's College Oxford
Bachelor of Arts
poet
The Museum
Dr. John Armstrong
George Colman
John Gilbert Cooper
David Garrick
John Home
Samuel Johnson
David Mallet
James Thomson
Rev. Joseph Warton
Rev. Thomas Warton
REFERENCE:
DNB; NCBEL; DLB.
Robert Dodsley, Collection of Poems (1748-58); Life by James Hampton in Poetical Calender (1763) vol. 12; "Some Account of the Life and Writings of William Collins" [from Poetical Calendar] Gentleman's Magazine 34 (January 1764) 23-24; John Langhorne, life in Collins, Poems (1765); "Life of the celebrated Mr. Collins" [by Langhorne] Lloyd's Evening Post (27 March 1765) 290-91; "Memoirs of Collins" British Magazine 6 (March 1765) 139-42 [from Langhorne]; Pearch, Supplement to Dodsley's Collection (1768-83); "Life of Mr. Collins [from Poetical Calendar] Oxford Magazine 11 (January 1774) 19-20; Bell's Poets of Great Britain (1776-82); Samuel Johnson, Life in Works of the English Poets (1779-81); Gilbert White, "Memoirs of the Life of William Collins, the Poet" Gentleman's Magazine 51 (January 1781) 11-12; John Scott of Amwell, "On Collins's Oriental Eclogues" in Critical Essays (1785); Bell's Fugitive Poetry (1789-97); Thomas Clio Rickman, "Dialogue in the Shades between Churchill and Collins" European Magazine 24 (1793) 345; Roach's Beauties of the Poets (1794); Robert Anderson, British Poets (1795); "Hayley and Collins" The Oracle (3 September 1795); William Seward, "Drossiana: William Collins" European Magazine 28 (October, December 1795) 236, 377; T. D., "On the Comparative Merit of Dryden's Ode on Alexander and Collins's on the Passions" European Magazine 28 (July 1795) 17-20; Anna Laetitia Barbauld, ed, Collins, Works (1797); Nathan Drake, "On the Frenzy of Tasso and Collins" in his Literary Hours (1798); George Knox, "Remarks on Collins's Ode on the Passions" Edinburgh Magazine or Literary Miscellany NS 17 (March 1801) 206-10; "William Collins" [memoir and notes from Langhorne] Monthly Anthology [Boston] 1 (November 1803-April 1804); Thomas Enort Smith, "Stanza of Collins ["To Evening"] Preserved" European Magazine 44 (December 1803) 428; Orielensis, "Various Readings of Collins" European Magazine 43 (March 1803) 183; Samuel Egerton Brydges, "Collins's Odes" Censura Literaria 5 (1805) 353-55, 6 (1808) 90-94, 389-91; Robert Southey, Specimens of Later English Poets (1807); "Some Particulars of Collins" European Magazine 51 (March 1807) 167; Samuel Jackson Pratt, Cabinet of Poetry (1808); "On the Allegorical Style of Collins; with a Comparison of it with that of Sackville" Censura Literaria 9 (1809) 414-23; Alexander Chalmers, English Poets (1810); "William Collins, the Poet" European Magazine 60 (August 1811) 208-09 [portrait]; "Collins's Ode on the Passions" Port Folio [Philadelphia] NS 7 (June 1812) 543-45; Alexander Chalmers, General Biographical Dictionary (1812-17); Isaac D'Israeli, "Disappointments disordering the Intellect" in Calamities of Literature (1812); Thomas Campbell, Specimens of the British Poets (1819); Ezekiel Sanford, British Poets (1819); "Interesting Particulars of the Poet Collins" Literary Gazette (5 May 1821) 281-82; Henry Francis Cary, "On Gray's Opinion of Collins" London Magazine 4 (July 1821) 13-16; "Collins and Gray" Edinburgh Magazine NS 15 (September 1824) 345-46; William Hazlitt, Select British Poets (1824); Robert Watt, Bibliotheca Britannica (1824); "Collins's Ode on the Passions" European Magazine 87 (May 1825) 419-21; George B. Cheever, Studies in Poetry ... Elegant Extracts (1830); The Georgian Era: Memoirs of the most Eminent Persons (1832-34); Robert Chambers, Cyclopaedia of English Literature (1844); Allibone, Critical Dictionary of English Literature (1858-71; 1882); Mark Anthony Lower, The Worthies of Sussex: Biographical Sketches (1865); Thomas S. Perry, "Gray, Collins and Beattie" Atlantic Monthly 46 (1880); The English Poets, ed. Thomas Humphry Ward (1880); Foster, Alumni Oxon (1887-91); Moulton, Library of Literary Criticism (1901-05); Alan D. McKillop, "The Romanticism of William Collins" Studies in Philology 20 (1923) 1-16; Iolo Williams, Seven Bibliographies (1924); H. W. Garrod, William Collins (1928); A. S. P. Woodhouse, "Imitations of the Ode to Evening" TLS (30 May 1929) 436; Edward G. Ainsworth, Poor Collins, His Life, his Art, His Influence (1937); Fairchild, in Religious Trends in English Poetry (1942); Lucyle Werkmeister, "Collins and the London Daily Press, 1788-1798" Notes and Queries 210 (1965) 225-27; P. L. Carver, The Life of a Poet (1967); Earl. R. Wasserman, "Collins's Ode on the Poetical Character" ELH 34 (1967) 92-115; Arthur Johnston, "The Poetry of William Collins" Proceedings of the British Academy 59 (1973) 321-40; Paul S. Sherwin, Precious Bane: Collins and the Miltonic Legacy (1977); Butt, OHEL (1979); Richard Wendorf, William Collins and Eighteenth-Century English Poetry (1981); Spenser Encyclopedia, "Collins" (1990) 177; Howard Weinbrot, "William Collins and the Mid-Century Ode" in Context, Influence, and Mid-Eighteenth-Century Poetry, ed. Weinbrot and Price (1990) 3-39; Chadwyck-Healey English Poetry Database (1995).
COMMENTARY RECORDS
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BIOGRAPHY RECORDS
for William Collins:
AUTHOR AS CRITIC:
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