Young, Edward

Young, Edward (1683-1765), English poet, born in Upham, Hampshire, and educated at the University of Oxford. He wrote The Universal Passion (1725-1728), a collection of verse satires, which was highly acclaimed. From 1730 until his death Young served as rector at Welwyn, Hertfordshire. There he wrote his masterpiece, The Complaint, or Night Thoughts on Life, Death, and Immortality (1742-1745), a long meditative essay in blank verse inspired by the successive deaths of his step-daughter, in 1736, her husband in 1740, and Young's wife, in 1741. Abounding in macabre imagery, Night Thoughts was the fountainhead of the so-called graveyard school of poetry.