Descended from a long line of clergymen, poet William Lisle Bowles grew up in Somerset, England. Unappreciated even in his lifetime, Bowles is best remembered as an early influence on Wordsworth and Coleridge. Bowles was an ardent defender of his own work and opinions, and engaged in literary feuds with some of the leading poets of his day, including Lord Byron. Though Bowles remains a minor figure in English literary history, his sonnets are an important link between the classical formalism of the 18th century and the radical individualism of the Romantic period.