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Collins, William 1721-59
English poet

Born in Chichester, Sussex, and educated at Winchester and Magdalen College, Oxford, he went to London to make a living by literature. During this period, he wrote his Odes, upon which his fame rests, but which attracted no notice at the time of publication (1747). In 1749 he retired to Chichester and met John Home, the author of Douglas, and gave him his 'Ode on the Superstitions of the Highlands', a poem in which, says James Lowell, 'the whole Romantic School is foreshadowed'.

Bibliography: P L Carver, The Life of a Poet: a biographical sketch (1967)