Draped in climbing ivy and surrounded by mossy headstones under a watercolor sunset sky, St Giles' Church at Stoke Poges in Buckinghamshire glows with the melancholy beauty that made it immortal — for it was here, in this very churchyard, that the poet Thomas Gray is said to have been inspired to write his Elegy Written in a Country Churchyard in 1750, one of the most quoted poems in the English language. This early chromolithograph card, printed by the celebrated Peacock Brand (Saxon works, Saxony, Germany) and carrying the pre-divided-back format with stamp rates of ½d inland and 1d abroad, was produced at the height of the Edwardian postcard craze — likely between 1900 and 1902. The hand-tinted image renders the church's distinctive thin spire and ivy-clad nave with romantic fidelity, the churchyard crosses and slate markers providing exactly the elegiac atmosphere Gray himself had described. Stoke Poges drew literary pilgrims throughout the Victorian and Edwardian eras; this card would have been a prized keepsake for any visitor.