Uploaded February 2015 | Updated September 2026, 2 weeks ago
Here's a virtual movie of Thomas Lovell Beddoes reading his very dark poem "Wee Wee Tailor" which is also known as "The Oviparous Tailor" This dark poetic fable tells of a tailor cursed by a witch to lay eggs like a chicken. There can be few less haunted poets than Thomas Lovell Beddoes the son of a surgeon who witnessed from an early age the horrors of patients going under the knife before the age of Anesthesia. Beddoes himself became a doctor until mental illness and infection contracted from a mortuary corpse and suicide ended his life prematurely at age 45.This definitive beautiful recital of the poem is by Alan Halsey.
Thomas Lovell Beddoes (30 June 1803[1] – 26 January 1849) was an English poet, dramatist and physician.
Born in Clifton, Bristol, England, he was the son of Dr. Thomas Beddoes, a friend of Samuel Taylor Coleridge, and Anna, sister of Maria Edgeworth. He was educated at Charterhouse and Pembroke College, Oxford. He published in 1821 The Improvisatore, which he afterwards endeavoured to suppress. His next venture, a blank-verse drama called The Bride's Tragedy (1822), was published and well reviewed, and won for him the friendship of Barry Cornwall.
Beddoes' work shows a constant preoccupation with death. In 1824, he went to Göttingen to study medicine, motivated by his hope of discovering physical evidence of a human spirit which survives the death of the body.[2] He was expelled, and then went to Würzburg to complete his training. He then wandered about practising his profession, and expounding democratic theories which got him into trouble. He was deported from Bavaria in 1833, and had to leave Zürich, where he had settled, in 1840.
He continued to write, but published nothing.
He led an itinerant life after leaving Switzerland, returning to England only in 1846, before going back to Germany. He became increasingly disturbed, and committed suicide by poison at Basel, in 1849, at the age of 45.[3]
For some time before his death he had been engaged on a drama, Death's Jest Book, which was published in 1850 with a memoir by his friend, T. F. Kelsall. His Collected Poems were published in 1851.
Kind Regards
Jim Clark
All rights are reserved on this video recordin g copyright Jim Clark 2015
Here's a virtual movie of Thomas Lovell Beddoes reading his very dark poem "Wee Wee Tailor" which is also known as "The Oviparous Tailor" This dark poetic fable tells of a tailor cursed by a witch to lay eggs like a chicken. There can be few less haunted poets than Thomas Lovell Beddoes the son of a surgeon who witnessed from an early age the horrors of patients going under the knife before the age of Anesthesia. Beddoes himself became a doctor until mental illness and infection contracted from a mortuary corpse and suicide ended his life prematurely at age 45.This definitive beautiful recital of the poem is by Alan Halsey.
Thomas Lovell Beddoes (30 June 1803[1] – 26 January 1849) was an English poet, dramatist and physician.
Born in Clifton, Bristol, England, he was the son of Dr. Thomas Beddoes, a friend of Samuel Taylor Coleridge, and Anna, sister of Maria Edgeworth. He was educated at Charterhouse and Pembroke College, Oxford. He published in 1821 The Improvisatore, which he afterwards endeavoured to suppress. His next venture, a blank-verse drama called The Bride's Tragedy (1822), was published and well reviewed, and won for him the friendship of Barry Cornwall.
Beddoes' work shows a constant preoccupation with death. In 1824, he went to Göttingen to study medicine, motivated by his hope of discovering physical evidence of a human spirit which survives the death of the body.[2] He was expelled, and then went to Würzburg to complete his training. He then wandered about practising his profession, and expounding democratic theories which got him into trouble. He was deported from Bavaria in 1833, and had to leave Zürich, where he had settled, in 1840.
He continued to write, but published nothing.
He led an itinerant life after leaving Switzerland, returning to England only in 1846, before going back to Germany. He became increasingly disturbed, and committed suicide by poison at Basel, in 1849, at the age of 45.[3]
For some time before his death he had been engaged on a drama, Death's Jest Book, which was published in 1850 with a memoir by his friend, T. F. Kelsall. His Collected Poems were published in 1851.
Kind Regards
Jim Clark
All rights are reserved on this video recordin g copyright Jim Clark 2015
