The English poet William Collins (1721-1759) excelled in the descriptive or allegorical ode. He also wrote classical odes and elegies and lyrics marked by delicate and pensive melody. William Collins was born on Dec. 25, 1721, in Chichester. His father...

William Collins had his first poem published when he was seventeen, his first book at twenty, his major volume a few days before turning twenty-five, and seems to have stopped writing poetry altogether by the time he was twenty-eight. For more than two...

On Nov. 9, U.S. Poet Laureate Billy Collins will be in Dayton to share his poetry and to announce the winners of this year's Dayton Metro Library's poetry contest. He'll be sharing the stage at Sinclair Community College's Blair Hall with the winners,...

William Collins's "Ode on the Poetical Character" (Lonsdale 427-35), first published in his Odes on Several Descriptive and Allegoric Subjects of 1746, has frequently posed problems of comprehension to critics of Collins's poetry (Jung, William Collins 96-107). Especially Collins's references to and reworking of...

Prosecutors dropped a murder charge against a man who claimed to have lured drug dealers to his remote western Missouri cabin, killed them and spread their remains across the property.A search in August turned up 35 bone fragments and a tooth at the property near...

In the following essay, Feingold examines some characteristics of Augustan poetry and compares the work of several poets, including Collins.

In the following essay, Spacks argues for a less-Romantic, rational view of the poetry of William Collins (1721-1759), whose central emotions and preoccupations—namely anxiety and the demonic—have led to his increased reputation among late twentieth-century critics.

In the essay below, Spacks contends that critics are mistaken in classifying Collins as a Romantic poet; rather, she argues, he should be considered a secondrank eighteenth-century poet.