THE ATHENAEUMThe TaskWilliam Cowper
Poetry
The Task
Read it in the Library After Dark Or read it as plain textWilliam Cowper’s long poem of 1785 began when a friend set him the sofa as a subject, and wandered from there into the garden, the countryside, the town and everything else. Her brother Henry wrote that her favourite moral writers were Johnson in prose and Cowper in verse. Fanny Price quotes him on the felling of avenues, and Marianne Dashwood despairs of Edward because he reads him so tamely.
The librarian
- Reading time
- About 2 hr 50 min
- Where to find it
- The Austen Room
- Edition
- Project Gutenberg, eBook #3698. In the public domain in the United States.