John Gray (poet)

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John Gray (March 2, 1866 – June 14, 1934) was an English poet whose works include Silverpoints, The Long Road and Park: A Fantastic Story.

[edit] Biography

Born in the working-class district of Bethnal Green, London, he is known today mostly as an aesthetic poet of the 1890s and as a friend of Ernest Dowson, Aubrey Beardsley and Oscar Wilde. He was also a talented translator, bringing works by the French Symbolists Mallarmé, Verlaine, Laforgue and Rimbaud into English, often for the first time. Purported to be the inspiration behind the title character in Wilde's The Picture of Dorian Gray, Gray distanced himself from this. His relationship with Wilde was initially intense, but had cooled for over two years by the time of Wilde's imprisonment.

Like many of the artists of that period, Gray was a convert to Roman Catholicism in the late '90s. He left his position at the Foreign Office and studied for the priesthood at the Scots College, Rome and later became a priest at Saint Patrick's and a rector at Saint Peter's in Edinburgh.

His most important supporter, and life partner, was the wealthy poet and early defender of homosexuality, Marc-André Raffalovich. He continued to write poetry of a high caliber for the rest of his life; later works were mainly devotional and often dealt with various Christian saints. His collected poems, with extensive notes, were printed in a 1988 edition edited by English professor and nineties expert Ian Fletcher.

He died in 1934 at St. Raphael's nursing home in Edinburgh after a short illness.

His great nephew is the alternative musician, Crispin Gray.

[edit] References

• Fletcher, Ian (ed.). The Poems of John Gray. Greensboro, North Carolina: ELT Press, 1988. ISBN 0-944318-00-2
• Sewell, Brocard. In The Dorian Mode (A Life of John Gray: 1866 – 1934). Padstow, Cornwall: Tabb House, 1983. ISBN 0-907018-18-1