George Darley
1795—1846
Irish poet and mathematician George Darley was born in Dublin and earned a BA at Trinity College. He settled in London in the early 1820s. Though he did not receive significant critical acclaim during his lifetime, he gained recognition in the 20th century for his linguistic and metrical inventiveness.
His poetry includes The Errors of Ecstacie (1822), The Labours of Idleness; Or, Seven Nights’ Entertainments (1826), and the epic Nepenthe (1835). An introduction to his work can be found in Selections from the Poems of George Darley (1904), edited by R.A. Streatfeild. His poem “It is not beauty I demand” so resembled the poetry of the 17th-century Caroline period that it was mistakenly anthologized in Palgrave’s Golden Treasury.
Darley also published several plays, including Sylvia (1827), Thomas À Becket (1840), and Ethelstan (1841). He worked as a writer of mathematical textbooks and as a drama critic for the London Magazine and as an art critic for the Athenaeum, often publishing under the pen name John Lacy.
His poetry includes The Errors of Ecstacie (1822), The Labours of Idleness; Or, Seven Nights’ Entertainments (1826), and the epic Nepenthe (1835). An introduction to his work can be found in Selections from the Poems of George Darley (1904), edited by R.A. Streatfeild. His poem “It is not beauty I demand” so resembled the poetry of the 17th-century Caroline period that it was mistakenly anthologized in Palgrave’s Golden Treasury.
Darley also published several plays, including Sylvia (1827), Thomas À Becket (1840), and Ethelstan (1841). He worked as a writer of mathematical textbooks and as a drama critic for the London Magazine and as an art critic for the Athenaeum, often publishing under the pen name John Lacy.