Thomas Gray – Interesting Literature

A Short Analysis of Thomas Gray’s ‘Ode on the Death of a Favourite Cat, Drowned in a Tub of Goldfishes’

By Dr Oliver Tearle (Loughborough University)

‘Ode on the Death of a Favourite Cat, Drowned in a Tub of Goldfishes’ is, along with his ‘Elegy Written in a Country Churchyard’ and his ‘Ode on a Distant Prospect of Eton College’, the most famous poem by Thomas Gray (1716-71). The poem was occasioned by a real-life event involving the cat belonging to Gray’s friend, Horace Walpole (author of the first Gothic novel among other things).

A Short Analysis of Thomas Gray’s ‘Elegy Written in a Country Churchyard’

By Dr Oliver Tearle (Loughborough University)

There was a time when every schoolchild could quote lines from Thomas Gray’s poem ‘Elegy Written in a Country Churchyard’, since it was a popular poem to be taught, learnt by rote, and analysed in schools in Britain.