Westminster Abbey, formally titled the Collegiate Church of St Peter at

Westminster, is a large, mainly Gothic abbey church in the City of Westminster,

London, just to the west of the Palace of Westminster. It is one of the United
Kingdom's most notable religious buildings and the traditional place
of coronation and burial site for English and, later, British monarchs.
Poets' Corner is the name traditionally given to a section of the South
Transept of Westminster Abbey because of the high number of poets, playwrights,
and writers buried and commemorated there.
The first poet interred in Poets' Corner was Geoffrey Chaucer in 1400, who
owed his burial there in 1400 more to his position as Clerk of Works of the Palace
of Westminster than to his fame as a writer.
What is interesting about this subject is that burial or commemoration in the Abbey
does not always occur at or soon after the time of death. Lord Byron, for example,
whose poetry was admired but who maintained a scandalous lifestyle, died in 1824
but was not given a memorial until 1969. Even William Shakespeare, buried
at Stratford-upon-Avon in 1616, was not honoured with a monument until 1740
when one designed by William Kent was constructed in Poets' Corner (though
shortly after his death William Basse had suggested Shakespeare should be buried
there.)

Some of those buried in Poets'

Corner also had memorials erected to
them over or near their grave, either
around the time of their death or
later. In some cases, such as Joseph
Addison, the burial took place
elsewhere in Westminster Abbey,
with a memorial later erected in
Poets' Corner. In some cases a full
burial of a body took place, in other
cases the body was cremated and the
ashes buried.
The memorials can take several forms. Some are stone slabs set in the floor
with a name and inscription carved on them, while others are more elaborate and
carved stone monuments, or hanging stone tablets, or memorial busts. Some are
commemorated in groups, such as the joint memorial for the Bront
sisters (commissioned in 1939, but not unveiled until 1947 due to the war), the
sixteen World War I poets inscribed on a stone floor slab and unveiled in 1985, and
the four founders of the Royal Ballet, commemorated together in 2009.