Thomas William Parsons

{{Short description|American dentist and poet}}

File:Thomas William Parsons.jpeg

Thomas William Parsons (August 18, 1819, Boston – September 3, 1892, Scituate, MassachusettsUnderwood, F. H., Builders of American literature, 1893) was an American dentist and poet.

Parsons was educated at the Boston Latin School, and visited Italy to study Italian literature in 1836-7. His translation of Dante's Divine Comedy, which eventually comprised all the Inferno, two-thirds of the Purgatorio and fragments of the Paradiso,Hart, J. D., Oxford companion to American literature, 1941 began to appear in 1843.Drake, F. S., Dictionary of American biography, 1870 After practicing dentistry in Boston, he lived for several years in England before returning to Boston in 1872.Appleton's cyclopaedia of American biography, 6 vols, 1888 He was a contributor to The Galaxy and The Atlantic Monthly. In 1857 he married Anna (or Hannah) M. Allen (1821-1881).