‘Elegy Written in a Country Churchyard’ is a poem by Thomas Gray, completed in 1750 and first published in 1751. The poem’s origins are unknown, but it was partly inspired by Gray’s thoughts following the death of the poet Richard West in 1742. There have been multiple editions of this poem printed over the years. This edition of the ‘Elegy’, published by James Bowden in London in 1898, was illustrated with copper plate photogravures from photographs by the American photographer James Leon Williams. James Leon Williams was an American prosthodontist and a pioneer dental histologist. He discovered the significance dental plaque.