George Darley
born 1795, Dublin, Ire.
died Nov. 23, 1846, London, Eng.
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.
