Item talk:Q387730

Education: Winchester (1695-1702); New College, Oxford (1702-1703); Corpus Christi College, Oxford (1703-1708); All Soul's College, Oxford (fellowship 1709-1730); Oxford B.C.L. 1714; Oxford D.C.L. 1719

Patrons: Richard Traffles (warden of New College; provided lodging); Thomas Turner (president of Corpus Christi; provided lodging); Thomas Tenison (Archbishop of Canterbury; nominated EY to fellowship); Philip, Duke of Warton (EY served as Latin secretary; pledged EY an annuity that he never paid); Jonathan Swift (“cured EY of writing triplets”); Richard Steele (puffed EY); Joseph Addison (puffed EY); George Bubb Dodington (helped EY get a pension from Walpole); Princess Caroline (helped EY get a pension from Walpole); Robert Walpole (gave EY a pension of ?200 p.a. in 1726)

Periodicals etc.: Poetical Miscellanies (ed. Richard Steele), 1714; The Loyal Mourner for the Best of Princes (ed. Charles Oldisworth), 1716

Overall: James May says that "Without any inherited wealth and with only his fellowship for subsistence into his forties, Young long supported himself through literature, writing dedications and poems aimed at preferment, tragedies for benefit nights, and popular poems self-published with copyrights later sold for profit." In other words, he benefited from the patronage system, the professional stage, and the copyright system of publication for money. For the second half of his life, his primary income seems to have been from a pension from Goerge I (?200 p.a. from 1726 on) and a living in the gift of his college, (?300 p.a.). He died rich--DNB listing of wealth at death around ?14,000

Jacob Sider Jost/ Mary Naydan/ Noah Fusco, “Poets of the 1730s: A Digital Humanities Seedling” (2017/ 2021)