Other poets, authors, and musicians were buried or memorialized in what became known as Poets' Corner around Chaucer. W. H. Auden, William Blake, Robert Burns, Lord Byron, Charles Dickens, John Dryden, George Eliot, and T. S. Eliot are among them.
Chopin is also buried in London, but not in Westminster Abbey. He is only buried on foreign soil because no country will take him. His body was brought to England after its removal to Poland, but the English government would not allow it to be buried in any British cemetery. So he was given a plot in the foreign section of Brookwood Cemetery near London.
Conducting his own funeral service, King Ludwig II of Bavaria was only 40 when he died in the Alps while trying to escape from madness. His death left a power vacuum in Germany that wasn't filled for months. During this time, his wife, Elizabeth of Bavaria, managed the royal estates and oversaw the construction of these beautiful gardens. When Elizabeth died, she too was buried here at the Munich Residence.
The most famous grave in the garden is that of Carl Maria von Weber, who lived from 1786-1826. He was a prolific composer best known for his opera scores including Oberon, Der Freischütz, and Eine Jugend (A Youth).
A number of London playwrights are buried in Poets' Corner. The poets Geoffrey Chaucer and Edmund Spenser, as well as Ben Jonson, Francis Beaumont, William Davenant, and Michael Drayton, are all buried at the Abbey.
Chaucer is considered the father of English poetry and is regarded as one of the greatest authors in world history. He published several books during his lifetime and was honored with a state funeral after his death in 1400.
Spenser became widely known throughout Europe for his work "The Faerie Queene". He died in 1599 at the age of 40. John Milton wrote his own eulogy or obituary for Spenser's death notice in the London Gazette.
Beaumont and Fletcher are two of the most celebrated Elizabethan playwrights. Both men died in 1616 at the age of 44. They are best known for their collaborations which included three plays each: A King and a Queen, Two Noble Kinsmen, and Three Crowns I & II.
Drayton is another poet who worked on various projects during his lifetime. His most famous works are the six Books of Poly-Olbion written between 1607 and 1612.
Jonson is another famous English writer who lived through many of great events in British history.
Poets' Corner is the name given to an area of Westminster Abbey's South Transept because of the large number of poets, playwrights, and writers buried and remembered there. Geoffrey Chaucer was the first poet buried at Poets' Corner. He has a magnificent tomb with an effigy of him carved by Tilney Lockhart in 1413. Sir Walter Raleigh is next to Chaucer; his grave is marked by a simple stone with only his date of death (8 March 1595) and the words "the noble author of 'The History of the World'". John Milton was buried near Raleigh but his body was later moved to St Giles-in-the-Fields outside London. His monument is one of the largest in the abbey.
Other notable people interred at Poets' Corner include Alexander Pope, William Shakespeare, Daniel Defoe, Jane Austen, and T. S. Eliot. There are also several other people commemorated by monuments in the abbey who were not actually priests or monks but instead played important roles in religious affairs during their lives: King Alfred the Great, Archbishop Thomas Becket, and Cardinal Henry de Wolstan are just three examples.
After the Norman Conquest, it was common for victorious armies to remove the bodies of their fallen from battlefields for burial back home. Writers and artists often used this fact as inspiration for fiction and drama.
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