It was printed many times and in a variety of formats, translated into many languages, and praised by critics even after Gray's other poetry had fallen out of favour.

The two versions of the poem, Stanzas and Elegy, approach death differently the first contains a stoic response to death, but the final version contains an epitaph which serves to repress the narrator's fear of dying. The poem argues that the remembrance can be good and bad, and the narrator finds comfort in pondering the lives of the obscure rustics buried in the churchyard. The poem is an elegy in name but not in form it employs a style similar to that of contemporary odes, but it embodies a meditation on death, and remembrance after death.

Gray was eventually forced to publish the work on 15 February 1751 in order to preempt a magazine publisher from printing an unlicensed copy of the poem. It was sent to his friend Horace Walpole, who popularised the poem among London literary circles. Originally titled Stanzas Wrote in a Country Church-Yard, the poem was completed when Gray was living near St Giles' parish church at Stoke Poges. The poem's origins are unknown, but it was partly inspired by Gray's thoughts following the death of the poet Richard West in 1742.

First page of Dodsley's illustrated edition of Gray's Elegy with illustration by Richard BentleyĮlegy Written in a Country Churchyard is a poem by Thomas Gray, completed in 1750 and first published in 1751.

Fallen london obscurity