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
David Wright (poet) outside Keswick, in the Lake District of England, and became good friends with Norman Nicholson, a fellow poet, and his wife, often visiting each other. Wright died of cancer in Waldron, East Sussex, 28 August 1994. David Wright (poet) David John Murray Wright (23 February 1920 – 28 August 1994) was an author and "an acclaimed South African-born poet". Wright was born in Johannesburg, South Africa 23 February 1920 of normal hearing. When he was 7 years old he contracted scarlet fever and was deafened as a result of the disease. He immigrated to England at the age of 14,