12 Facts About John Dyer

John Dyer was a painter and Welsh poet who became a priest in the Church of England.

John Dyer was most recognised for Grongar Hill, one of six early poems featured in a 1726 miscellany.

John Dyer's work has always been more anthologised than published in separate editions, but his talent was later recognised by William Wordsworth among others.

John Dyer was the fourth of six children born to Robert and Catherine Cocks Dyer in Llanfynydd, Carmarthenshire, five miles from Grongar Hill.

John Dyer's grandfather was churchwarden there and his father was a highly successful solicitor in Llanfynnydd and owned several properties in the neighbourhood.

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John Dyer then left Aberglasney for London in 1720 or 1721 to pursue painting and poetry.

In London, John Dyer apprenticed himself under the artist Jonathan Richardson.

John Dyer's epistle "To Aurelia", another member of the coterie, is an appeal to "leave the smoky Town" with him for some rural retreat.

John Dyer was on the lookout for a suitable subject for a longer poem and began work on the unfinished fragment "The Cambro-Briton".

Now John Dyer married a 26-year-old widow, Sarah Ensor Hawkins, with whom he had several children.

The contents of these varied little, until the appearance of The Poems of Mark Akenside and John Dyer, This included manuscript poems in the possession of a family descendant, William Hilton Longstaffe, who had earlier written a commentary on some of these in The Patrician.

John Dyer worked outside the trend of politically oriented work and kept his focus on the rural landscape, its colours and visual perspective, following his training as a painter.