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
Richard Howitt (poet) Richard Howitt (poet) Richard Howitt (1799–1869) was a British poet. Howitt was born in Heanor in Derbyshire in 1799, was the son of Thomas Howitt and Phoebe Tantum. William Howitt, the writer, was his elder brother and Mary Howitt was William's wife. His younger brother was Godfrey Howitt. He spent his earlier years as a pharmacist in Nottingham, at first in partnership with his brother William, but finally on his own account. He was an ardent lover of literature, and published in 1830 a volume of poems entitled "Antediluvian Sketches." This was highly praised and was followed in 1840 by