William Collins

William Collins (25 December 1721 – 12 June 1759) was an English poet. Second in influence only to Thomas Gray, he was an important poet of the middle decades of the 18th century. His lyrical odes mark a progression from the Augustan poetry of Alexander Pope's generation and towards the imaginative ideal of the Romantic era.

Born in Chichester, Sussex, the son of a hatmaker and former mayor of the town, Collins was educated at The Prebendal School, Winchester and Magdalen College, Oxford. While still at the university, he published the Persian Eclogues, which he had begun at school. After graduating in 1743 he was undecided about his future. Failing to obtain a university fellowship, being judged by a military uncle as 'too indolent even for the army', and having rejected the idea of becoming a clergyman, he settled for a literary career and was supported in London by a small allowance from his cousin, George Payne. There he was befriended by James Thomson and Dr Johnson as well as the actors David Garrick and Samuel Foote.

Following the failure of his collection of odes in 1747, Collins' discouragement, aggravated by drunkenness, so unsettled his mind that he eventually sank into insanity and by 1754 was confined to McDonald's Madhouse in Chelsea. From there he moved to the care of an elder sister in Chichester, who lived with her clergyman husband within the cathedral precincts. There Collins continued to stay, with periods of lucidity during which he was visited by the Warton brothers. On his death in 1759, he was buried in St Andrew-in-the-Oxmarket Church.