Francis Thompson (1859 - 1907)

Francis Thompson

Francis Thompson was a British poet and literary critic.

Thompson received a Roman Catholic education at Ushaw Seminary College, also studying medicine in Manchester, but became addicted to opium. From 1885 he lived in poverty in London, where 1888 his first two poems were finally published. After that he published two more collections of poems. His unsettled and deprived life ended at the age of 47 from tuberculosis.

Thompson is now ranked among Britain's greatest Catholic poets. Francis Thompson's most famous poem is "The Heavenly Dog" (1893).