Thomas Lovell Beddoes

Thomas Lovell Beddoes (born June 30, 1803, Clifton, Somerset, Eng.—died Jan. 26, 1849, Basel, Switz.) was a poet best known for his haunting dramatic poem Death’s Jest-Book; or, The Fool’s Tragedy.

The son of a distinguished scientist, Beddoes seems early to have acquired, from his father’s dissections and speculations on anatomy and the soul, an obsession with death that was to dominate his life and work. He was educated at Charterhouse, where his passion for the drama became evident and where he nourished his imagination on 18th-century Gothic romances. In 1820 he went to Oxford University, where he wrote his first considerable work, The Bride’s Tragedy (1822), based on the story of a murder committed by an undergraduate. In 1825 he went to Göttingen, Ger., to study anatomy and medicine. There he continued work on Death’s Jest-Book. Friends who read the first version advised revision, and Beddoes’ acceptance of their advice hindered his poetic development: for the rest of his life he was unable to escape from the work or to complete it, and it was eventually published posthumously in 1850.

In Death’s Jest-Book itself, which Beddoes described as an example of “the florid Gothic,” he aimed to use Gothic material to discuss the problems of mortality and immortality.

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After trouble with the university authorities, Beddoes left Göttingen, moved to Würzburg (where he received his M.D.), and there involved himself in radical politics. More trouble caused him to leave Germany for Zürich, where his interest in writing English verse waned. In 1840 he had to flee from Switzerland, probably for political reasons, and he never afterward settled in one place for very long. He visited England for the last time in 1846–47. Two years later he committed suicide.