William Collins (25 December 1721 - 12 June 1759), English poet, was educated at Winchester and Oxford, moved to London in the 1740s and spent the last years of his life in Chichester. 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 turn away from the Augustan poetry of Alexander Pope's generation and towards the romantic era which would soon follow.

Works

• Persian Eclogues (1742)
• Odes on Several Descriptive and Allegorical Subjects (1746)
• Ode on the Death of Thomson (1749)
• Ode on the Popular Superstitions of the Highlands (1750)

1721 births | 1759 deaths | English poets

William Collins (poète)