Works
Traherne was an inconsequential literary figure during his life, whose works were unappreciated until long after his death. He led a humble, devout life, largely sheltered from the literary community. Only one of his works, Roman Forgeries (1673), was published in his lifetime. Christian Ethicks (1675) followed soon after his death, and later A Serious and Patheticall Contemplation of the Mercies of God (1699); but after that much of his finest work was lost, corrupted or misattributed to other writers.
His poems have a curious history. They were left in manuscript and presumably passed with the rest of his library into the hands of his brother Philip. They then apparently passed into the possession of the Skipps family of Ledbury, Herefordshire. When the property of this family was dispersed in 1888 the value of the manuscripts was unrecognised, for in 1896 or 1897 they were discovered by W. T. Brooke on a street bookstall. Alexander Grosart bought them, and proposed to include them in his edition of the works of Henry Vaughan, to whom he was convinced the writings belonged. He left this task uncompleted, and Bertram Dobell, who eventually secured the manuscripts, discerned that the author had attended Oxford University. He was then able to establish the authorship of Thomas Traherne.
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Famous quotes containing the word works:
“The slightest living thing answers a deeper need than all the works of man because it is transitory. It has an evanescence of life, or growth, or change: it passes, as we do, from one stage to the another, from darkness to darkness, into a distance where we, too, vanish out of sight. A work of art is static; and its value and its weakness lie in being so: but the tuft of grass and the clouds above it belong to our own travelling brotherhood.”
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“You are always looking for already-felt emotions, just as you like to get an old pair of trousers back from the cleaners, which seem new when you don’t look too closely. Artists are cleaners, don’t let yourself be taken in by them. True modern works of art are made not by artists but quite simply by men.”
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“To receive applause for works which do not demand all our powers hinders our advance towards a perfecting of our spirit. It usually means that thereafter we stand still.”
—G.C. (Georg Christoph)