There anchoring, Peter chose from Man to hide,
There hang his Head, and view the lazy Tide
In its hot slimy Channel slowly glide. . .
George Crabbe, eighteenth-century poet, clergyman and surgeon-apothecary, is best known for 'Peter Grimes', the tale of a sadistic fisherman that inspired Benjamin Britten's opera of the same name. The brutal crimes and 'tortur'd guilt' of Grimes play out within the bleak, improbably beautiful setting of Aldeburgh. While Crabbe has fallen in and out of fashion, the Suffolk town and its landscape have continued to captivate writers and artists, including Britten, Ronald Blythe, Susan Hill and Maggi Hambling - all drawn to the stark coastline, eerie mudflats and open skies.
In A Time and a Place, Frances Gibb engages afresh with Crabbe's writing - tracing, for the first time, the resonance of this place in his life and work. She delves into his creative struggles, religious faith, romantic loves and opium addiction. Above all, she explores the continual lure - for Crabbe and those who have followed - of the 'little venal borough', and the land and sea beyond.
Inhaltsverzeichnis
List of Illustrations
Acknowledgements
Chronology
Introduction A Local Habitation and a Name
1. George Crabbe's Aldeburgh
California: Crabbe recalled
Aldeburgh: A wild amphibious race
Crabbes in East Anglia: Too obscure to possess a history
Aldeburgh: That boy must be a fool
Wickhambrook and Woodbridge: La! Here's our new 'prentice!
Aldeburgh: The Leech Pond
2. Growing to Manhood: Love, London and Literary Success
Parham: A young lady that would just suit you
London: I have parted with my money, sold my wardrobe
London: The hand that rescued him
Aldeburgh revisited: A prophet is not without honour .
3. Domesticity and Botanising: Crabbe's Middle Years
Belvoir and Stathern: Th e very happiest years in his life
Parham and Glemham: A family walk through the green lanes
Rendham: The final Suffolk years
4. Religion and Politics
Crabbe and religion: Without a little Latin, we should have made nothing of you
Crabbe and opium: His long and generally healthy life
Crabbe and politics: We can do no good, or we would be among them
5. Character and Creation
Aldeburgh: I hear those voices that will not be drowned
Aldeburgh: Grimes on the beach
Aldeburgh: Untouched by pity, unstung by remorse
Crabbe and writing: What I thought I could best describe, that I have attempted
Leaving Suffolk: The seat of joy, the source of pain
6. Endings and Beginnings
Bath and London: I am something of a novelty
Crabbe and women: Oh! For some Made-on-purpose-Creature
Trowbridge: A few Sundays more
Postscript
Bibliography
Index
