Crabbe, George, 1754–1832, English poet, b. Aldeburgh, Suffolk. After practicing medicine for a short time, he went to London in 1780, hoping to earn money by his writing. He was befriended by Edmund Burke, whose generous assistance aided in the publication of The Library (1781). He took orders in 1781 and held various livings, becoming rector at Trowbridge in 1814. The Village (1783), his most famous work, is a grim picture of rustic life, written partly in reply to Goldsmith's nostalgic Deserted Village. His bleak, realistic descriptions of life led Byron to call him "nature's sternest painter, yet the best." His other works include The Parish Register (1807), The Borough (1810), Tales (1812), and Tales of the Hall (1819).

Bibliography

See biographies by his son (ed. by E. M. Forster, 1932; repr. 1949) and R. L. Chamberlain (1965); studies by A. Pollard (1972) and B. Nelson (1976).

Crabbe, George

(born Dec. 24, 1754, Aldeburgh, Suffolk, Eng.—died Feb. 3, 1832, Trowbridge, Wiltshire) English poet. Reared in an impoverished seacoast village, Crabbe initially became a surgeon. In 1780 he left for London, where his poem The Village (1783) brought him fame; written partly as a protest against Oliver Goldsmith's Deserted Village (1770), it was Crabbe's attempt to show the misery of rural poverty. The Newspaper followed in 1785, but he did not publish again until 1807. In “The Parish Register,” he used the register of births, deaths, and marriages to depict the life of a rural community. Considered the last of the Augustan poets, he wrote in heroic couplets. His story of the isolated and violent Peter Grimes in The Borough became the basis of a famous opera by Benjamin Britten.