Home > William Shenstone

1 Life

Son of Thomas and Anne, daughter of William Penn of Harborough Hall,

At school he began a lifelong friendship with Richard Jago. He went up to Pembroke College, Oxford in 1732Events February 23 First performance of Handel's Orlando in London June 9 James Oglethorpe is granted a royal charter for the colony of Georgia. December 7 The original Covent Garden Theatre Royal (now the Royal Opera House) is opened Genoa regains Corsic and made another firm friend there in Richard GravesRichard Graves ( 1715 1804) was an English poet and novelist. A fellow of All Souls College, Oxford and rector of Claverton, near Bath, he was an enthusiastic collector of poems, a translator, essayist and correspondent. His best-known work is the picares, the author of The Spiritual Quixote.

He took no degree, but, while still at Oxford, he published Poems on various occasions, written for the entertainment of the author ( 1737Events 12 February The San Carlo, the oldest working opera house in Europe, is inaugurated. Benjamin Franklin created the Philadelphia police force the first city-paid force. In Britain the Theatrical Licensing Act requires plays to be submitted to the Lo). This edition was intended for private circulation only but, containing the first draft of The Schoolmistress, it attracted some wider attention. Shenstone tried hard to suppress it but in 1742Events January 24 Charles VII Albert becomes Holy Roman Emperor. February 16 Spencer Compton, Earl of Wilmington, becomes Prime Minister of Great Britain. February 18 British attack La Guayra. April 8 The first performance of George Frideric Handel's orat he published anonymously a revised draft of The Schoolmistress, a Poem in imitation of Spenser. The inspiration of the poem was Sarah Lloyd, teacher of the village school where Shenstone received his first education. Isaac D'IsraeliA 1797 portrait Isaac D'Israeli ( 1766 1848), was born in Enfield, Middlesex, England, in May 1766, his father being a Jewish merchant who had emigrated from Venice a dozen or so years previously. He received much of his education in Leiden and as early a contended that Robert DodsleyRobert Dodsley ( 1703 September 23, 1764) was an English bookseller and miscellaneous writer. He was born near Mansfield, Nottinghamshire, where his father was master of the free school. He is said to have been apprenticed to a stocking-weaver in Mansfiel had been misled in publishing it as one of a sequence of Moral Poems, its intention having been satiricalSatire is a literary technique of writing or art which principally ridicules its subject (individuals, organizations, states) often as an intended means of provoking or preventing change. In Celtic societies, it was thought a bard's satire could have phys, as evidenced by the ludicrous index appended to its original publication.

In 1741Events April 10 Austrian army attack troops of Frederick the Great at Mollwitz December 19 Vitus Bering dies in his expedition east of Siberia December 25 Anders Celsius develops his own thermometer scale Celsius William Browning invents mineral water Eli he published The Judgment of Hercules. He inherited the Leasowes estate, and retired there in 1745 to undertake what proved the chief work of his life, the beautifying of his property. He embarked on elaborate schemes of landscape gardening which gave the Leasowes a wide celebrity, but sadly impoverished the owner. Shenstone was not a contented recluse. He desired constant admiration of his gardens, and he never ceased to lament his lack of fame as a poet.

Shenstone died unmarried. One of the five houses of Solihull School is named after him.