William Cowper Biography Quotes 32 Report mistakes

Early Life and Education
William Cowper was born in 1731 at Berkhamsted in Hertfordshire, the son of the Rev. John Cowper, rector of the parish and a chaplain to the king, and Ann Donne, who died when her son was six. The early loss of his mother left an enduring wound that he later expressed with deep tenderness in his poem On the Receipt of My Mother's Picture. Cowper was sent to Westminster School, where he received a rigorous classical education and formed a lasting attachment to poetry and letters. Although he excelled in Latin and Greek, school life also brought bullying and loneliness, experiences that foreshadowed the nervous fragility that marked his adulthood.

Legal Training and First Collapse
Following school, Cowper was articled to a solicitor and then entered the Inner Temple, being called to the bar in 1754. He never established a practice, preferring the society of literary friends and quiet reading. An early and thwarted love for his cousin Theodora Jane Cowper, celebrated in his youthful verses under the name Delia, compounded his inward struggles. In 1763 he was appointed to a clerkship in the House of Lords that required a public examination; the prospect provoked a catastrophic breakdown and attempts at self-destruction. He was placed under the care of Dr. Nathaniel Cotton at St. Albans, whose humane treatment and gentle piety helped restore him. From this period onward Cowper's life alternated between intervals of serenity and episodes of religious despair.

Olney, the Unwins, and John Newton
In search of quiet and companionship, Cowper settled at Huntingdon and boarded with the family of the Rev. Morley Unwin and his wife, Mary Unwin. The warmth and steadiness of Mary's affection became the principal anchor of his life. After Morley Unwin's sudden death, Cowper and Mary moved to Olney in Buckinghamshire to live under the pastoral care of John Newton, an ardent Evangelical minister and former seafarer. Newton provided spiritual guidance and a framework for disciplined devotion. Together Cowper and Newton produced the Olney Hymns, a collection that became central to English hymnody. Cowper's contributions include O for a Closer Walk with God, There is a Fountain Filled with Blood, and the much-loved God Moves in a Mysterious Way. Newton's own Amazing Grace appeared in the same volume, and the collaboration bound the two men in friendship and purpose.

Poetic Breakthrough and Literary Circle
Cowper's first volume, Poems by William Cowper, of the Inner Temple, Esq. (1782), gathered moral satires and reflective pieces such as Table Talk, The Progress of Error, Truth, Hope, and Charity, establishing his distinctive voice: conversational blank verse, domestic in setting, serious yet humane. About this time he befriended Lady Austen, a spirited widow whose encouragement released new energies. At her urging he wrote The Diverting History of John Gilpin, a comic ballad that became instantly popular, and then The Task (1785), his major work. Framed by an opening meditation on a sofa, The Task ranges from garden and lane to nation and conscience, uniting observation of nature with moral inquiry. Its ease of movement and moral candor influenced a rising generation of poets.

Faith, Melancholy, and Everyday Life
Cowper's piety was intense and personal, sometimes luminous, sometimes shadowed by a conviction of reprobation that no argument could dispel. Yet he retained a genius for the homely and the humane. He kept three tame hares and immortalized them with affectionate humor; he wrote with delicacy about rural walks, winter evenings, and simple neighborly kindness. The stability he found with Mary Unwin was reinforced by renewed contact with family, especially his cousin Harriet Hesketh (Lady Hesketh), whose generosity enabled him to move from Olney to nearby Weston Underwood and to live more comfortably. His correspondence with friends and kin, full of wit, self-knowledge, and unforced elegance, later came to be valued as highly as his poems.

Translations, Patronage, and Later Trials
Cowper undertook an ambitious blank-verse translation of Homer, publishing the Iliad and the Odyssey in the early 1790s. The project drew support from the poet William Hayley, who visited Cowper, encouraged his labors, and later wrote a memoir of him. Hayley introduced artists who made Cowper's likeness known to a wider public. Even as he worked, periods of mental anguish returned. Mary Unwin suffered a debilitating illness and died in 1796, a loss from which he never recovered. His younger cousin John Johnson, a devoted cleric, took charge of his care, bringing him to Norfolk in hopes that the sea air and change of scene would restore him. In these years Cowper produced bleak and powerful late work, notably The Castaway, a poem that mirrors the extremity of his inward storm.

Death and Legacy
Cowper died in 1800 at East Dereham, having endured cycles of darkness relieved by steady friendships and the discipline of writing. He left a body of poetry and prose that bridged Augustan decorum and Romantic inwardness. His blank verse, supple and conversational, opened new possibilities for meditative landscape and domestic reflection; his hymns entered the common worship of English-speaking churches; his letters set a standard for candid, refined epistolary style. Friends such as John Newton and Mary Unwin shaped his days; kinswomen Theodora and Harriet Hesketh sustained him with love and means; patrons like William Hayley preserved and publicized his work; physicians and pastors, from Dr. Nathaniel Cotton to the faithful John Johnson, steadied him when his mind threatened to fail. Through all, Cowper spoke for quiet virtues, moral seriousness, and the healing touch of ordinary life, and his influence can be traced in poets who sought, as he did, to join conscience with the living voice of nature.

Our collection contains 32 quotes who is written by William, under the main topics: Witty One-Liners - Ethics & Morality - Wisdom - Truth - Meaning of Life.

• 1785 The Task (Poetry)
• 1779 Olney Hymns (Collection)