page_title: William Shenstone
section_title: Biography
hierarchical_section_title: William Shenstone / Biography
caption_attribution_description: English: An image of the view from the ruined Halesowen Priory towards The Leasowes (on the crest of the hill on the right). It shows the house as it was during the lifetime of William Shenstone.
context_page_description: William Shenstone was an English poet and one of the earliest practitioners of landscape gardening through the development of his estate, The Leasowes.
context_section_description: Son of Thomas Shenstone and Anne Penn, daughter of William Penn of Harborough Hall, then in 
  Hagley (now Blakedown), Shenstone was born at the Leasowes, Halesowen on 18 November 1714. At that time this was an exclave of Shropshire within the county of Worcestershire and now in the West Midlands. Shenstone received part of his formal education at Halesowen Grammar School (now The Earls High School).  In 1741, Shenstone became bailiff to the feoffees of Halesowen Grammar School.
  While attending Solihull School, he began a lifelong friendship with Richard Jago. He went up to Pembroke College, Oxford in 1732 and made another firm friend there in Richard Graves, the author of The Spiritual Quixote.
  Shenstone took no degree, but, while still at Oxford, he published Poems on various occasions, written for the entertainment of the author (1737). This edition was intended for private circulation only but, containing the first draft of The Schoolmistress, it attracted some wider attention. Shenstone tried hard to suppress it but in 1742 he published anonymously a revised draft of The Schoolmistress, a Poem in imitation of Spenser. The inspiration of the poem was Sarah Lloyd, teacher of the village school where Shenstone received his first education. Isaac D'Israeli contended that Robert Dodsley had been misled in publishing it as one of a sequence of Moral Poems, its intention having been satirical, as evidenced by the ludicrous index appended to its original publication.
  In 1741 he published The Judgment of Hercules. He inherited the Leasowes estate, and retired there in 1745 to undertake what proved the chief work of his life, the beautifying of his property. He embarked on elaborate schemes of landscape gardening which gave The Leasowes a wide celebrity (see ferme ornée), but sadly impoverished the owner. Shenstone was not a contented recluse. He desired constant admiration of his gardens, and he never ceased to lament his lack of fame as a poet.
  In 1759, Shenstone made the acquaintance of James Woodhouse, a shoe-maker from nearby Rowley Regis who had started writing poetry. Shenstone encouraged Woodhouse's literary efforts, allowing him access to the library at the Leasowes and including one of Woodhouse's works in a collection of poems published in 1762.
  Shenstone died unmarried on 11 February 1763.
caption: The view from the ruined Halesowen Priory towards The Leasowes (on the crest of the hill on the right).
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