Editing Westminster Abbey (section)

=== Poets' Corner ===
{{Main|Poets' Corner}}
[[File:View of Poets' Corner in Westminster Abbey 03.jpg|alt=Many white stone statues and busts of writers|thumb|Some of the memorials to writers in [[Poets' Corner]], including [[William Shakespeare]]]]

The south transept of the church is known as Poets' Corner because of its high number of burials of, and memorials to, poets and writers. The first was [[Geoffrey Chaucer]] (buried around 1400), who was employed as [[Clerk of works|Clerk of the King's Works]] and had apartments in the abbey. A second poet, [[Edmund Spenser]] (who was local to the abbey), was buried nearby in 1599. The idea of a Poets' Corner did not crystallise until the 18th century, when memorials were established to writers buried elsewhere, such as [[William Shakespeare]] and [[John Milton]]. Since then, writers buried in Poets' Corner have included [[John Dryden]], [[Alfred, Lord Tennyson]], [[Charles Dickens]], and [[Rudyard Kipling]]. Not all writers buried in the abbey are in the south transept; [[Ben Jonson]] is buried standing upright in the north aisle of the nave, and [[Aphra Behn]] in the cloisters.{{sfn|Jenkyns|2004||pp=78–81}}