This Augustan Reprint Society edition presents Gray’s poem of evening in a village churchyard, its meditation on the forgotten poor and its famous closing epitaph, in the text of the first edition of 1751. It pairs that text with the earlier Eton College manuscript and an introduction by George Sherburn on the poem’s composition and reception.
The most quoted poem of the eighteenth century, in a form that lets readers watch Gray revise it. Download the free EPUB.