Many visitors to the Abbey are attracted to Poets' Corner, with its memorials to great men of letters. Many outstanding statesmen, painters, writers and poets are buried there. Among them are Charles Dickens, Thomas Hardy, Rudyard Kipling and others. Chaucer, who is buried in the Abbey, is remembered here. So are Spenser, Dryden, Ben Jonson, and Milton. There are also memo­rials to Shakespeare, Burns, Byron, Walter Scott, Thackeray and to the American poet Longfellow. A full length statue of Shake­speare by Scheemakers was erected in 1741, and just opposite is a monument to the actor David Garrick. He is aptly shown parting the curtains. Dr Johnson is represented with a magnifi­cent bust by Nollekens, and there is a remarkable rendering of Blake's life-mask by Epstein.
Nearly all English kings and queens have been crowned in Westminster Abbey.

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