George Darley

George Darley (born 1795, Dublin, Ire.—died Nov. 23, 1846, London, Eng.) was a poet and critic little esteemed by his contemporaries but praised by 20th-century writers for his intense evocation, in his unfinished lyrical epic Nepenthe (1835), of a symbolic dreamworld. Long regarded as unreadable, this epic came to be admired in the 20th century for its dream imagery, use of symbolism to reveal inner consciousness, and tumultuous metrical organization.

Darley became a free-lance writer in London in 1821. A perceptive critic, he wrote for the literary London Magazine and other journals, meanwhile publishing a succession of failures. In his own day, Darley’s greatest successes were his mathematical textbooks. Combined with his failure as a creative writer, an incurable stammer sapped his self-confidence, but he kept in touch with his many friends by letter writing, at which he excelled.