Thomas Lovell Beddoes (1803–49) was an English poet, dramatist, and psychologist. He is noted for his haunting dramatic poem Death’s Jest-Book; or, The Fool’s Tragedy (1850.)
Born in Clifton, near Bristol, Beddoes was the eldest son of physician and scientific writer Thomas Beddoes. Thomas was educated at Charterhouse and Oxford. In 1822, he published The Bride’s Tragedy, a somber murder drama of a murder committed by an undergrad.
Beddoes went to Göttingen (1825) to study anatomy and medicine. Then he led a wandering life as a doctor and democrat in Germany (In Würzburg, he received his M.D. and involved himself in radical politics) and Switzerland, with occasional visits to England.
From 1825, Beddoes was engaged in composing a Gothic-Romantic drama in blank verse, Death’s Jest-book (1850.) Influenced by Elizabethan and Jacobean tragedy, it establishes Beddoes’s fascination with the macabre, the paranormal, and bodily decay.
Beddoes is now best known for his briefer works, such as ‘Dream Pedlary’ and the lyrics that appear in Death’s Jest-Book.
More: Wikipedia • READ: Works by Thomas Lovell Beddoes
If there were dreams to sell, what would you buy?
—Thomas Lovell Beddoes
Topics: Dreams
Tell me how many beads there are
In a silver chain
Of evening rain,
Unravelled from the tumbling main,
And threading the eye of a yellow star: –
So many times do I love again.
—Thomas Lovell Beddoes
Topics: Weather, Love
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