Poets' Corner is the name traditionally given to a section of the South Transept of Westminster Abbey due to the number of poets, playwrights and writers now buried and commemorated there.
The first person to be interred there was Geoffrey Chaucer, whose burial in the abbey owed more to his position as Clerk of Works of the Palace of Westminster than to his fame as a writer. However, the erection of a magnificent tomb to Chaucer in the middle of the sixteenth century and the nearby burial of Edmund Spenser in 1599 started a tradition that is still upheld, although the area also houses the tombs of several Canons and Deans of the abbey.
People buried in Poets' Corner
People commemorated with memorials in Poets' Corner
Last updated: 05-07-2005 12:31:53
