Sydney Thompson Dobell (1824–74)

Poet and literary scholar. Worked in his father’s Gloucestershire wine business, and published poems in the ‘Spasmodic’ school, which was criticised for excess of metaphor and extravagance of language. Delivered a three-hour lecture ‘The nature of poetry’ to the Edinburgh Philosophical Society in 1857. His poems reflected his deep religious convictions. A supporter of rights for women and the co-operative system of private enterprise.