Thomas Lovell Beddoes

Thomas Lovell Beddoes (1803–1849) was an English poet, dramatist and physician, educated at Charterhouse and Oxford. He spent most of his adult life on the Continent, studying medicine in Germany and Switzerland.

His great work, the blank-verse tragedy Death’s Jest-Book, was begun in the 1820s and published only after his death in 1850. It is full of grave-haunted lyrics, such as “Dream-Pedlary” and “Old Adam, the Carrion Crow,” for which he is now chiefly read. He died in Basel in 1849.