Christopher Smart

Christopher Smart, 1722–71, English poet. A graduate of Cambridge, he lived in London writing poems, editing a humorous magazine, and producing plays. His one great poem, Song to David (1763), an inspirational piece containing superb imagery, was written while he was confined in an asylum for a religious mania. He is also known for his idiosyncratic and often anthologized paean ...

Christopher Smart, 1722–71, English poet. A graduate of Cambridge, he lived in London writing poems, editing a humorous magazine, and producing plays. His one great poem, Song to David (1763), an inspirational piece containing superb imagery, was written while he was confined in an asylum for a religious mania. He is also known for his idiosyncratic and often anthologized paean to his cat, Jeoffry, from the surviving fragments of his Jubilate Agno, which was also written during his confinement but not published in a definitive edition until 1954.

See study by F. E. Anderson (1974).