William Shenstone

William Shenstone (November 13, 1714 in Halesowen - February 11, 1763) was an English poet. He was the son of the clergyman Thomas Shenstone (1686–1723) and after his father's death, his uncle Thomas Dolman became his guardian. He was interested in literature even as a child. He later commemorated his first teacher, Sarah Lloyd, in the poem The Schoolmistress (1736).

After graduating from grammar school, he studied at Pembroke College in Oxford from May 1732. After two years, he dropped out of his studies and retired to the countryside, but remained officially enrolled until 1742. At the age of 19, he wrote his first poem. In 1737, he published a small edition of a collection of poems, Poems on various occasions. In 1743, he wrote A Pastoral Ballad, one of his most famous poems. After the death of his guardian in 1745, he took over the 150-acre family estate The Leasowes and, in addition to writing, devoted himself to landscape gardening. Through his work Unconnected Thoughts on Gardening (1759, published 1764), he is considered one of the founders of the concept of the Ferme Ornée, which was intended to reconcile aesthetic design and agricultural use. This influenced, among others, the American President Thomas Jefferson in the design of his country estate Monticello.

Shenstone maintained numerous correspondences and received guests to whom he proudly showed his gardens. However, he had only a modest income and was plagued by financial worries throughout his life. He died unmarried and without descendants, and his gardens fell into disrepair after his death. His literary work was published in 3 volumes by his friend Robert Dodsley in 1764–1769 under the title The works in verse and prose of William Shenstone. His poems were appreciated by Oliver Goldsmith and Robert Burns, among others. In 1786, Burns described him as that celebrated poet whose divine elegies do honor to our language, our nation and our species. Horace Walpole, on the other hand, was very critical of him. Samuel Johnson, in particular, played a major role in the fact that Shenstone is almost forgotten as a poet today. He wrote about him in a less than flattering way: The general recommendation of Shenstone is easiness and simplicity; his general defect is want of comprehension and variety. Had his mind been better stocked with knowledge, whether he could have been great, I know not; he could certainly have been agreeable. Shenstone went down in the history of the English language through his coinage of the word floccinaucinihilipilification, which he used in a letter in 1741.