In the following essay, Reed argues that the birth of Graveyard poetry, such as Thomas Gray's “Elegy Written in a Country Church Yard,” stemmed from a reaction to what some in the seventeenth century claimed was a disease, melancholy, and discusses the influences of the Graveyard poets.

In the following essay, originally published in 1781, Johnson provides a brief overview of Gray's life and claims that there is more to be celebrated in the life that he lived than in the poetry he created, in which he finds very little originality.

In the following essay, Jackson provides a detailed examination of Gray's treatment of the themes of desire and authority in his poetry.

In the following essay, which forms the concluding chapter of Golden's full-length study of Gray, Golden briefly outlines some of the characteristics of Neoclassical and Romantic literature and then discusses Gray's poetry and his place in English literary history in relation to both traditions.

In the following chronological study of Gray's poetry, Cox considers the progression of Gray's ideas concerning humankind's limitations and the significance of the individual self.

In the following essay, Spacks analyzes the language of "Ode on the Spring," "Sonnet on the Death of Mr. West," and "Ode on a Distant Prospect of Eton College,"focusing on Gray's use of alternating rhetorical patterns.

In the following essay, originally published in 1895, Phelps traces the transition in Gray's works from Neoclassicism to Romanticism.

In the following excerpt, Brooke compares Gray's poetry with that of William Collins and delineates Gray's chief creative influences, assessing the impact of his works on the transition in English poetry from Neoclassicism to Romanticism.