Poet, born in Aldeburgh, Suffolk, E England, UK. He trained as a surgeon, but turned to literature. He was ordained in 1782, and held livings in Suffolk and Wiltshire. His best-known work from this early period is The Village (1783), a realistic portrait of rural life. He then wrote nothing for over 20 years. His later narrative poems include The Parish Register (1807), The Borough (1810), and other volumes of Tales.
George Crabbe (December 24, 1754 - February 3, 1832) was an English poet and naturalist.
He was born in Aldeburgh, Suffolk, the son of a tax collector, and developed his love of poetry as a child. In 1780, he went to London, where he had little success, but eventually made an impression on Edmund Burke, who helped him have his poem, The Library, published in 1781.
The two works for which Crabbe became best known were The Village (1783) and The Borough (1810), both lengthy poems dealing with the way of life he had grown up with.
Benjamin Britten's opera Peter Grimes is based on The Borough.
He was also an active and notable coleopterist and recorder of beetles, and is credited for taking the first specimen of Calosoma sycophanta L. He published an essay on the Natural History of the Vale of Belvoir in John Nichols's, Bibliotheca Topopgraphia Britannica, VIII, Antiquities in Leicestershire, 1790. Soc., 4, 1896, 198-200), who concluded that George Crabbe had both a broad knowledge of national species and was well acquainted with contemporary scientific literature, including works by Linnaeus and Fabricius.
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