John Gray (poet) French, German, Latin, music and art. In 1882 he passed the Civil Service exams and, five years later, the University of London matriculation exams. He joined the Foreign Office where he became a librarian. Gray is best known today 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 Stéphane Mallarmé, Paul Verlaine, Jules Laforgue and Arthur Rimbaud into English, often for the first time. He is purported to be the inspiration behind the title character in Wilde's "The
William of Blois (poet) William of Blois (poet) William of Blois was a French medieval poet and dramatist. He wrote at least one poetical work, which has not survived, and some dramas. Besides being an author, William was also an ecclesiastic, being considered for a Sicilian bishopric and serving as abbot of a monastery in Italy. William was from the Loire Valley, the brother of fellow poet Peter of Blois. While named after Blois, there is no documentary evidence that either brother was born there. The family's origins may have been in Brittany. The family, which also included sisters, had some nobility if not