Robert Bolling (poet)



Robert Bolling (August 17, 1738 – July 21, 1775) was an American planter, poet and politician. The great-grandson of Robert Bolling, he was born in Virginia and sent to England for his education. On his return to Virginia, he studied law before taking over at Chellowe, a tobacco plantation operated with slave labor in Buckingham County which Bolling inherited from his father.

Though he published at least 35 poems in British periodicals during his lifetime, more poetry than any other American colonist at the time, most of his works remained in manuscript, and remain unpublished to this day. His papers are now owned by the University of Virginia and the Huntington Library. Bolling also wrote a book entitled A Memoir of a Portion of the Bolling Family in England and Virginia, which published posthumously in 1868; it was originally written in French and translated by a descendant of his brother.

Bolling was a member of the House of Burgesses. He died in July 1775, possibly of a heart attack, in Richmond, Virginia while attending the Third Virginia Convention. The cantata Virginiana was published by composer Gregory Spears in 2015, based on texts written by Bolling during his failed courtship of his cousin, Anne Miller, in 1760.