grayt.ead.0001-mss.0044Thomas Gray Manuscripts:An Inventory at the Thomas Gray Archive.Alexander HuberThomas Gray Archive2006Catalogued in EAD 2002 by Alexander Huber,
Editor, Thomas Gray Archive, 2005-Englishgrayt.ead.0001-mss.0044#did0001mss.poemsPoems[ca.
1725]-1771poems.elccElegy Written in a Country
ChurchyardThe curfew tolls the knell of parting day,1751Starr/Hendrickson (eds.), Complete Poems (1966), 37-43Lonsdale (ed.), Poems (1969), 103-141
Begun c. 1745 and completed
early in June 1750 at Stoke Poges.
Gray sent the poem
in a letter to
Horace
Walpole dated 12 June 1750.
First published, as An Elegy wrote in a Country Church
Yard and printed by Dodsley, in 1751.
mss.0044poems.elccElegy, written in a
Country-Churchyard18 December [1750]3autograph fair copy, faint227 mm x 188 mmMS Egerton 2400 (Wharton MS), ff. 45-46r Manuscripts Collection BLUK
MS catalogued by Alexander
Huber in Manuscripts, British Library, on 25/11/2006.
Facsimiles include McDermott, Penn and Gray (1930),
14-16 and Fukuhara, Bibliographical Study (1933), plate
II
Smith (ed.), Index (1989), item GrT 33, 82Toynbee/Whibley (eds.), Correspondence (1971), letter no. 156,
vol. i, 334-340 (subscription required)Elegy
(1976)Sutton (ed.), Location Register (1995), 414Northup, Bibliography (1917), item 1996Catalogue of a Sotheby's sale (27 February 1950), lot
239, facsimile in catalogue
Autograph fair copy, following a letter to
Thomas
Wharton, 18 December
[1750].