Poets' Corner

• 1. Introduction

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  Poets' Corner, in the southern transept of Westminster Abbey in London, came into existence through an accident of bureaucracy. Geoffrey Chaucer was buried there in 1400 not as the author of The Canterbury Tales but as a royal official. He held the post of Clerk of Works at the Palace of Westminster, and that government role gave him his claim on the Abbey.

  That founding accident set in motion centuries of selection, exclusion, and controversy. Who would be deemed worthy of a place among Britain's honored dead? How long might a writer wait before the Abbey acknowledged them? And what happened when those in charge simply refused?

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• 2. The Tradition Deepens

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  Nicholas Brigham erected a new tomb for Chaucer in 1556, more than 150 years after the poet's burial. Chaucer's remains were transferred to it at that point. Edmund Spenser's burial nearby in 1599 provided a second stitch in the pattern. The area also came to hold the grave of Thomas Parr, who supposedly died in 1635 at the age of 152. He had reportedly seen ten sovereigns on the throne.

  William Basse, writing after William Shakespeare's death in 1616, made the case for Shakespeare's burial in Poets' Corner. The suggestion was not taken up. Shakespeare was buried at Stratford-upon-Avon. Not until 1740 did the Abbey erect a monument in his honor. It was a statue with surround, designed by William Kent and carved by Peter Scheemakers.

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• 3. The Politics of Admission

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  Samuel Horsley, Dean of Westminster in 1796, made his objections known when a request arrived to bury the actress Kitty Clive in the Abbey. His recorded response was blunt: "if we do not draw some line in this theatrical ambition to mortuary fame, we shall soon make Westminster Abbey little better than a Gothic Green Room!"

  Lord Byron died in 1824, and the Abbey kept him waiting 145 years. His poetry was widely admired, but his lifestyle was considered scandalous. A memorial floor stone was finally placed in 1969. Samuel Butler had died in poverty. When Samuel Wesley composed Butler's epitaph, he kept Butler's satiric tone intact rather than softening it for the occasion. Not everyone who attracted support for Poets' Corner received it. Edward Bulwer-Lytton had advocates for a place in the transept but was ultimately buried elsewhere in the church.

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• 4. Complicated Arrangements

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  Charles Dickens's will said nothing about where he wished to be buried, but it was explicit about one thing: no grand funeral ceremony. The Abbey honored that instruction with a secret early-morning interment on the 14th of June 1870, before the public could gather.

  Thomas Hardy's funeral in 1928 generated a more open dispute. Hardy had wanted to lie at Stinsford, in the grave of his first wife Emma. His executor, Sir Sydney Carlyle Cockerell, was adamant that Hardy belonged in Poets' Corner. A compromise divided Hardy's remains. His heart was buried at Stinsford on the 16th of January 1928, and his ashes were interred at the Abbey. Rudyard Kipling's ashes followed in 1936.

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• 5. Ben Jonson's Singular Place

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  Ben Jonson's grave is not in Poets' Corner. It lies in the north aisle of the nave, beneath a slab inscribed "O Rare Ben Jonson." Read as Latin, "Orare Ben Jonson" would mean "pray for Ben Jonson," pointing to a possible deathbed return to Catholicism. The carving itself preserves a visible space between "O" and "rare," which keeps that reading contested.

  One account holds that Jonson asked the monarch for a grave exactly 18 inches square. He received an upright burial to fit his remains into that small a space. Whether reduced circumstances or personal eccentricity drove the request, the result was unlike any other grave in the Abbey. In 1723, a wall tablet designed by James Gibbs and carved by John Michael Rysbrack was erected in Poets' Corner in his memory. That gave Jonson a foothold in both sections of the church.

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• 6. Stone, Glass, and Newer Names

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  A joint memorial for the Bronte sisters was commissioned in 1939, but the Second World War delayed its unveiling until 1947. A slate stone slab honoring 16 First World War poets was unveiled on the 11th of November 1985, the 67th anniversary of the Armistice. It carries a quotation from Wilfred Owen's "Preface": "My subject is War, and the pity of War. The Poetry is in the pity." A floor stone for the four founders of the Royal Ballet was dedicated on the 17th of November 2009.

  In 1994, the Abbey unveiled a stained glass window in memory of Edward Horton Hubbard. New commemorations are inscribed as individual panes of glass. The window holds room for 20 names; six have been filled. Oscar Wilde was added in 1995, and Sir John Gielgud and Dame Judi Dench attended, each reading extracts from his work. The most recent name in the window is Elizabeth Gaskell, whose pane was unveiled on the 25th of September 2010.

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