Poets’ Corner Totally Explained

Everything about Poets Corner totally explained

Poets’ Corner is the name traditionally given to a section of the South Transept of Westminster Abbey due to the number of poets, playwrights, and writers now buried and commemorated there.
   The first person to be interred there was Geoffrey Chaucer, whose burial in the abbey owed more to his position as Clerk of Works of the Palace of Westminster than to his fame as a writer. However, the erection of a magnificent tomb by Nicholas Brigham to Chaucer in the middle of the sixteenth century and the nearby burial of Edmund Spenser in 1599 started a tradition that's still upheld, although the area also houses the tombs of several Canons and Deans of the abbey. Also buried here's Thomas Parr, who it's said died at the age of 152 in 1635 after having seen ten sovereigns on the throne.
   Burial or commemoration in the Abbey didn't always occur at or soon after the time of death. Lord Byron, for example, whose poetry was admired but who maintained a scandalous lifestyle, died in 1824 but wasn't given a memorial until 1969. Even William Shakespeare, buried at Stratford-upon-Avon in 1616, wasn't honoured with a monument until 1740 when one designed by William Kent was constructed in Poets' Corner.
   Not all poets appreciated memorialisation and Samuel Wesley's epitaph for Samuel Butler, who supposedly died in poverty, continued Butler's satiric tone:
ť While Butler, needy wretch, was yet alive,

   No generous patron would a dinner give; ť See him, when starv'd to death, and turn'd to dust,

   Presented with a monumental bust. ť The poet's fate is here in emblem shown,

   He ask'd for bread, and he received a stone.

People buried in Poets' Corner

People commemorated with memorials in Poets' Corner

Dame Peggy Ashcroft

Jane Austen

Lord Byron

Charles Lutwidge Dodgson/Lewis Carroll

Mary Ann Evans/George Eliot

Thomas Gray

Gerard Manley Hopkins

Alfred Edward Housman

Henry James

John Keats

Jenny Lind

Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

Christopher Marlowe

John Milton

John Ruskin

Walter Scott

William Shakespeare

Percy Bysshe Shelley

William Makepeace Thackeray

Dylan Thomas

Anthony Trollope

Oscar Wilde

William Wordsworth

Noel Coward

Other Poets' Graves

Information about the last resting places of other famous poets can be found at:

Poets' Graves

Find a Grave

Further Information

Get more info on 'Poets Corner'.

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