One of the most popular poets of his time, Cowper changed the direction of 18th-century nature poetry by writing of everyday life and scenes of the English countryside.

Samuel Taylor Coleridge called him "the best modern poet", whilst William Wordsworth particularly admired his poem "Yardley-Oak".

His poem "Light Shining out of Darkness" gave English the phrase: "God moves in a mysterious way/ His wonders to perform."

[4] Cowper wrote a poem called "The Negro's Complaint" (1788) which rapidly became very famous, and was often quoted by Martin Luther King Jr. during the 20th-century civil rights movement.

[9] After education at Westminster School, Cowper was articled to Mr Chapman, solicitor, of Ely Place, Holborn, to be trained for a career in law.

During this time, he spent his leisure at the home of his uncle Bob Cowper, where he fell in love with his cousin Theodora, whom he wished to marry.

But as James Croft, who in 1825 first published the poems Cowper addressed to Theodora, wrote, "her father, from an idea that the union of persons so nearly related was improper, refused to accede to the wishes of his daughter and nephew."

[10] In 1763 he was offered a Clerkship of Journals in the House of Lords, but broke under the strain of the approaching examination; he experienced a worse period of depression and insanity.

In 1773, Cowper experienced an attack of insanity, imagining not only that he was eternally condemned to hell, but that God was commanding him to make a sacrifice of his own life.

Cowper himself tells of the genesis of what some have considered his most substantial work, The Task, in his "Advertisement" to the original edition of 1785: ...a lady, fond of blank verse, demanded a poem of that kind from the author, and gave him the SOFA for a subject.

[12] Cowper and Mary Unwin moved to Weston Underwood, Buckinghamshire, in 1786, having become close to his cousin Harriett Hesketh (Theodora's sister).

They originally stayed at North Tuddenham, then at Dunham Lodge near Swaffham and then Mundesley before finally settling in East Dereham (all places in Norfolk) with the Johnsons, after Mary Unwin became paralysed.

[23] The folly was dedicated to Cowper by the Buckinghamshire county council green belt estate, and a plaque with the verse from "The Task" referencing the alcove was installed.

Modern literary scholar Conrad Brunstrom described Cowper's relationships with women and men at this time as queer and radically anti-heteronormative.

Cowper's translations of Homer were part of a broader movement in the 18th and 19th centuries to make classical literature more accessible to English-speaking audiences.

While his translations may not be as widely read today as some others, they were influential in their time and contributed to the ongoing appreciation of Homer's works in English-speaking countries.

There is a fountain fill'd with blood Drawn from Emmanuel's veins; And sinners, plung'd beneath that flood, Lose all their guilty stains.

No voice divine the storm allay'd, No light propitious shone; When, snatch'd from all effectual aid, We perish'd, each alone; But I beneath a rougher sea, And whelmed in deeper gulphs than he.

'Tis pleasant, through the loopholes of retreat, To peep at such a world; to see the stir Of the great Babel, and not feel the crowd; To hear the roar she sends through all her gates At a safe distance, where the dying sound Falls a soft murmur on the uninjur'd ear.