William Leslie Bowles Presentation

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I have compiled all of our collected information thus far. Michelle and I plan to continue to update this information as the semester progresses (including adding our findings about the remaining pamphlets from the first printing). If you thought of any other questions, feel free to comment and we will try to find answers for you.

William Leslie Bowles 

English poet, critic, and clergyman

“These Sonnets were originally composed in my solitary hours; when, in youth a wanderer among distant scenes, I sought forgetfulness of the first disappointment in early affections. “-Bowles

Background Information

• (Born September 24, 1762, Kings Sutton, Northamptonshire, England—died April 7, 1850, Salisbury, Wiltshire)
• Elected in 1781 a scholar of Trinity College, Oxford
• In 1792 he took his Master's degree, and was ordained to the curacy of Donhead St. Andrew in Wiltshire.
• Spent most of his early years in Northamptonshire, which is the same district that is the birthplace of Lyrical Ballads
• His work was highly acclaimed by the early romantics and is a foreshadowing of the works of Wordsworth and Coleridge.  
• Coleridge especially admired him for his genuine emotions.  He notes Bowels as a true genius and even as an icon.
• He admired Bowels so much he asked him for his opinion on his work Osorio, this lead to their tumultuous friendship.

Coleridge on Bowles

• 'Bowles and Cowper of the then living poets', says the Biographia Literaria, 'were, to the best of my knowledge, the first who combined natural thoughts with natural diction.
• 'Bowles, the most tender, and with the exception of Burns, the only always natural poet in our language.'
• he was now 'auspiciously withdrawn chiefly by the genial influence of a style of poetry, so tender and yet so manly, so natural and real, and yet so dignified and harmonious, as the sonnets and other early poems of Mr. Bowles.'

Fourteen Sonnets

• They were revolutionary because they abandoned the 18^th century conventions and focused on both sentimental feelings and nature.
• They domesticate with the heart, and become, as it were, a part of our identity –Coleridge (an identity that the middle class was in search of)
• Contrary to Gilfillan’s notes the sonnets were not written about his rejection from a niece of Sir Samuel Romilly (although this did upset him), which was based on his lack of status.
• Instead they were written about the disappointment of love specifically- the death of one of his affections.
• The sonnets were written as a means to cope and heal with his grief.

Composition

“I confined myself to fourteen lines, because fourteen lines seemed best adapted to unity of sentiment. I thought nothing about the strict Italian model.”-Bowles

• He journeyed for some time through the north of England, Scotland, and parts of the Continent
• Some of the key places where the sonnets were composed are named in the sonnets such as: Dover cliffs, Wensbeck River, Bamburgh castle, Rhine River etc.
• Bowles and Charlotte Smith were the first 2 poets to make sonnets popular in England (according to Coleridge)
• Bowels does occasionally use a correct sestet for the less strict Italian form, however Bowels sonnets did not actually follow any true sonnet form (nor did Wordsworth)
• There is no rigid demarcation of octave and sestet-or any sestet at all. the melancholy sententiousness of the poet is reflected in the use of the closing couplet.
• The division is marked in the rhyme arrangements

Publication

• The fourteen sonnets were originally  published in 1789
• They were published   anonymously in a first edition of one hundred copies.
• The sonnets were printed as a Quarto (abbreviated 4to or 4°) is a book or pamphlet produced from full 'blanksheets', each of which is printed with eight pages of text, four to a side, then folded two times to produce four leaves (that is, eight book pages). Each printed page now presents as one-fourth size of the full blanksheet.
• Expectations for the book's success were slim; the publisher was convinced he would never recoup the cost of printing the first one hundred copies. However, within six months all the copies had been sold and the printer acknowledged that he could have sold five times that number. The book was revised and reprinted several times and by 1805, it was in its ninth edition.

Modern Critiques

• He is considered the father of modern poetry by some scholars
• His work has also been cited as the influence for Wordsworth and Coleridge, and upheld the principles of the romantic poet but he was quickly out-shined by his predecessors.
• Critics also site that much of his work directly resembles the work of others such as Milton and Shakespeare.
• His legacy remains his sonnets and the impact that his genuine emotion and depiction of nature had on the romantics.

-->Sources: 

• http://libproxy.library.unt.edu:8367/itw/infomark/855/918/195481100w16/purl=rc1_CLC_0_H1420038476&dyn=3!xrn_1_0_H1420038476?sw_aep=txshracd2679
• http://spenserians.cath.vt.edu/TextRecord.php?action=GET&textsid=35140