Samuel Taylor Coleridge (21 October 1772 – 25 July 1834) was an English poet, Romantic, literary critic and philosopher who, with his friend William Wordsworth, was a founder of the Romantic Movement in England and a member of the Lake Poets. He is probably best known for his poems The Rime of the Ancient Mariner and Kubla Khan, as well as for his major prose work Biographia Literaria. His critical work, especially on Shakespeare, was highly influential, and he helped introduce German idealist philosophy to English-speaking culture. He coined many familiar words and phrases, including the celebrated suspension of disbelief. He was a major influence, via Emerson, on American transcendentalism. Throughout his adult life, Coleridge suffered from crippling bouts of anxiety and depression; it has been speculated by some that he suffered from bipolar disorder, a condition as yet unidentified during his lifetime. Coleridge suffered from poor health that may have stemmed from a bout of rheumatic fever and other childhood illnesses. He was treated for these concerns with laudanum, which fostered a lifelong opium addiction.

Madison Julius Cawein (March 23, 1865 – December 8, 1914) was a poet from Louisville, Kentucky. He was the fifth child of William and Christiana (Stelsly) Cawein. His father made patent medicines from herbs thus, as a child, Cawein became acquainted with and developed a love for local nature.

William Cowper (26 November 1731 – 25 April 1800) was an English poet and hymnodist. One of the most popular poets of his time, Cowper changed the direction of 18th century nature poetry by writing of everyday life and scenes of the English countryside. In many ways, he was one of the forerunners of Romantic poetry. Samuel Taylor Coleridge called him “the best modern poet”, whilst William Wordsworth particularly admired his poem Yardley-Oak. He was a nephew of the poet Judith Madan.

Gilbert Keith Chesterton (29 May 1874 – 14 June 1936) was an English writer, philosopher, Christian apologist, and literary and art critic. He has been referred to as the "prince of paradox". Of his writing style, Time observed: "Whenever possible Chesterton made his points with popular sayings, proverbs, allegories—first carefully turning them inside out." Chesterton created the fictional priest-detective Father Brown, and wrote on apologetics. Even some of those who disagree with him have recognised the wide appeal of such works as Orthodoxy and The Everlasting Man. Chesterton routinely referred to himself as an "orthodox" Christian, and came to identify this position more and more with Catholicism, eventually converting to Roman Catholicism from high church Anglicanism. Biographers have identified him as a successor to such Victorian authors as Matthew Arnold, Thomas Carlyle, John Henry Newman and John Ruskin.

Edward Estlin Cummings (October 14, 1894 – September 3, 1962), popularly known as E. E. Cummings, with the abbreviated form of his name often written by others in lowercase letters as e.e. cummings (in the style of some of his poems—see name and capitalization, below), was an American poet, painter, essayist, author, and playwright. His body of work encompasses approximately 2,900 poems, two autobiographical novels, four plays and several essays, as well as numerous drawings and paintings. He is remembered as a preeminent voice of 20th century poetry.

Adelaide Crapsey (September 9, 1878– October 8, 1914) was an American poet. Born in Brooklyn, New York, she was raised in Rochester, New York, daughter of Adelaide T. Crapsey and Episcopal priest Algernon Sidney Crapsey, who had been transferred from New York City to Rochester.

John Clare (13 July 1793 – 20 May 1864) was an English poet, the son of a farm labourer, who came to be known for his celebratory representations of the English countryside and his lamentation of its disruption. His poetry underwent a major re-evaluation in the late 20th century and he is often now considered to be among the most important 19th-century poets. His biographer Jonathan Bate states that Clare was "the greatest labouring-class poet that England has ever produced. No one has ever written more powerfully of nature, of a rural childhood, and of the alienated and unstable self”.

Charles Lutwidge Dodgson (27 January 1832 – 14 January 1898), better known by the pseudonym Lewis Carroll, was an English author, mathematician, logician, Anglican deacon and photographer. His most famous writings are Alice's Adventures in Wonderland and its sequel Through the Looking-Glass, as well as the poems "The Hunting of the Snark" and "Jabberwocky", all examples of the genre of literary nonsense. He is noted for his facility at word play, logic, and fantasy, and there are societies in many parts of the world (including the United Kingdom, Japan, the United States, and New Zealand) dedicated to the enjoyment and promotion of his works and the investigation of his life.

Ada Cambridge (21 November 1844 – 19 July 1926), later known as Ada Cross, was an English-born Australian writer. She wrote more than twenty-five works of fiction, three volumes of poetry and two autobiographical works. Many of her novels were serialized in Australian newspapers, and were never published in book form. While she was known to friends and family by her married name, Ada Cross, she was known to her newspaper readers as A.C.. Later in her career she reverted to her maiden name, Ada Cambridge, and it is thus by this name that she is known.

William James “Billy” Collins (born March 22, 1941) is an American poet, appointed as Poet Laureate of the United States from 2001 to 2003. He is a Distinguished Professor at Lehman College of the City University of New York and is the Senior Distinguished Fellow of the Winter Park Institute, Florida. Collins was recognized as a Literary Lion of the New York Public Library (1992) and selected as the New York State Poet for 2004 through 2006. He is (in 2015) a teacher in the MFA program at Stony Brook Southampton.

Bliss Carman FRSC (April 15, 1861– June 8, 1929) was a Canadian poet who lived most of his life in the United States, where he achieved international fame. He was acclaimed as Canada’s poet laureate during his later years. In Canada, Carman is classed as one of the Confederation Poets, a group which also included Charles G.D. Roberts (his cousin), Archibald Lampman, and Duncan Campbell Scott. “Of the group, Carman had the surest lyric touch and achieved the widest international recognition. But unlike others, he never attempted to secure his income by novel writing, popular journalism, or non-literary employment. He remained a poet, supplementing his art with critical commentaries on literary ideas, philosophy, and aesthetics.”

Raymond Clevie Carver, Jr. (May 25, 1938– August 2, 1988) was an American short-story writer and poet. Carver contributed to the revitalization of the American short story in literature during the 1980s. Early life Carver was born in Clatskanie, Oregon, a mill town on the Columbia River, and grew up in Yakima, Washington, the son of Ella Beatrice (née Casey) and Clevie Raymond Carver. His father, a sawmill worker from Arkansas, was a fisherman and heavy drinker. Carver’s mother worked on and off as a waitress and a retail clerk. His one brother, James Franklin Carver, was born in 1943. Carver was educated at local schools in Yakima, Washington. In his spare time, he read mostly novels by Mickey Spillane or publications such as Sports Afield and Outdoor Life, and hunted and fished with friends and family. After graduating from Yakima High School in 1956, Carver worked with his father at a sawmill in California. In June 1957, at age 19, he married 16-year-old Maryann Burk, who had just graduated from a private Episcopal school for girls. Their daughter, Christine La Rae, was born in December 1957. Their second child, a boy named Vance Lindsay, was born a year later. He supported his family by working as a delivery man, janitor, library assistant, and sawmill laborer. During their marriage, Maryann also supported the family by working as an administrative assistant and a high school English teacher, salesperson, and waitress. Writing career Carver became interested in writing in Paradise, California, where he had moved with his family to be close to his mother-in-law. While attending Chico State College, he enrolled in a creative writing course taught by the novelist John Gardner, a recent doctoral graduate of the Iowa Writers’ Workshop who became a mentor and had a major influence on Carver’s life and career. Carver’s first published story, “The Furious Seasons”, appeared in 1961. More florid than his later work, the story strongly bore the influence of William Faulkner. “Furious Seasons” was later used as a title for a collection of stories published by Capra Press, and is now in the recent collection, No Heroics, Please and Call If You Need Me. It is a common misconception that Carver was influenced by Ernest Hemingway, as both writers exhibit a similar economical and plain prose style. In his essay “On Influence”, however, Carver states clearly that, while he was an admirer of Hemingway’s fiction, he never saw him as an influence, citing instead the work of Lawrence Durrell. Carver continued his studies under the short-story writer Richard Cortez Day (like Gardner, a recent PhD alumnus of the Iowa program) at Humboldt State College in Arcata, California. After electing not to take the foreign language courses required by the English program, he received his B.A. in general studies in 1963. During this period he was first published and served as editor for Toyon, the university’s literary magazine, in which he published several of his own pieces under his own name as well as the pseudonym John Vale. With his B– average—exacerbated by his penchant to forsake coursework for literary endeavors—ballasted by a sterling recommendation from Day, Carver was accepted into the Iowa Writers’ Workshop on a $1,000 fellowship for the 1963–1964 academic year. Homesick for California and unable to fully acclimate to the program’s upper middle class milieu, he only completed 12 credits out of the 30 required for a M.A. degree or 60 for the M.F.A. degree. Although he was awarded a fellowship for a second year of study from program director Paul Engle after Maryann Carver personally interceded and compared her husband’s plight to Tennessee Williams’ deleterious experience in the program three decades earlier, Carver decided to leave the program at the end of the semester. Maryann (who postponed completing her education to support her husband’s educational and literary endeavors) eventually graduated from San Jose State College in 1970 and taught English at Los Altos High School until 1977, when she enrolled in the University of California, Santa Barbara’s doctoral program in English. In the mid-1960s, Carver and his family resided in Sacramento, California, where he briefly worked at a bookstore before taking a position as a night custodian at Mercy Hospital. He did all of the janitorial work in the first hour and then wrote at the hospital through the rest of the night. He audited classes at what was then Sacramento State College, including workshops with poet Dennis Schmitz. Carver and Schmitz soon became friends, and Carver wrote and published his first book of poems, Near Klamath, under Schmitz’s guidance. With the appearance of Will You Please Be Quiet, Please? in Martha Foley’s annual Best American Short Stories anthology and the impending publication of Near Klamath by the English Club of Sacramento State College, 1967 was a landmark year for Carver. He briefly enrolled in the library science graduate program at the University of Iowa that summer but returned to California following the death of his father. Shortly thereafter, the Carvers relocated to Palo Alto, California, so he could take his first white-collar job at Science Research Associates (a subsidiary of IBM), where he worked intermittently as a textbook editor and public relations director through 1970. Following a 1968 sojourn to Israel, the Carvers relocated to San Jose, California; as Maryann finished her undergraduate degree, he continued his graduate studies in library science at San Jose State through the end of 1969 before failing once again to take a degree. Nevertheless, he established vital literary connections with Gordon Lish and the poet/publisher George Hitchcock during this period. After the publication of “Neighbors” in the June 1971 issue of Esquire at the instigation of Lish (by now ensconced as the magazine’s fiction editor), Carver began to teach at the University of California, Santa Cruz at the behest of provost James B. Hall (an Iowa alumnus and early mentor to Ken Kesey at the University of Oregon), commuting from his new home in Sunnyvale, California. Following a succession of failed applications, he received a $4,000 Stegner Fellowship to study in the prestigious non-degree graduate creative writing program at Stanford University during the 1972–1973 term, where he cultivated friendships with Kesey-era luminaries Ed McClanahan and Gurney Norman in addition to contemporaneous fellows Chuck Kinder, Max Crawford, and William Kittredge. The fellowship enabled the Carvers to buy a house in Cupertino, California. He took on another teaching job at the University of California, Berkeley that year and briefly rented a pied-à-terre in the city; this development was largely precipitated by his instigation of an extramarital affair with Diane Cecily, a University of Montana administrator and mutual friend of Kittredge who would subsequently marry Kinder. During his years of working at miscellaneous jobs, rearing children, and trying to write, Carver started abusing alcohol. By his own admission, he essentially gave up writing and took to full-time drinking. In the fall semester of 1973, Carver was a visiting lecturer in the Iowa Writers’ Workshop with John Cheever, but Carver stated that they did less teaching than drinking and almost no writing. With the assistance of Kinder and Kittredge, he attempted to simultaneously commute to California and maintain his lectureship at Santa Cruz; after missing all but a handful of classes due to the inherent logistical hurdles of this arrangement (including various alcohol-related illnesses), Hall gently enjoined Carver to resign his position. The next year, after leaving Iowa City, Carver went to a treatment center to attempt to overcome his alcoholism, but continued drinking for three years. His first short story collection, Will You Please Be Quiet, Please?, was published in 1976. The collection itself was shortlisted for the National Book Award, though it sold fewer than 5,000 copies that year. After being hospitalized three times (between June 1976 and February or March 1977), Carver began his “second life” and stopped drinking on June 2, 1977, with the help of Alcoholics Anonymous. While he continued to regularly smoke marijuana and later experimented with cocaine at the behest of Jay McInerney during a 1980 visit to New York City, Carver believed he would have died of alcoholism at the age of 40 had he not overcome his drinking. Carver was nominated again in 1984 for his third major-press collection, Cathedral, the volume generally perceived as his best. Included in the collection are the award-winning stories “A Small, Good Thing”, and “Where I’m Calling From”. John Updike selected the latter for inclusion in The Best American Short Stories of the Century. For his part, Carver saw Cathedral as a watershed in his career, in its shift towards a more optimistic and confidently poetic style. Personal life and death Decline of first marriage The following excerpt from Scott Driscoll’s review of Maryann Burk Carver’s 2006 memoir describes the decline of Maryann and Raymond’s marriage. The fall began with Ray’s trip to Missoula, Mont., in '72 to fish with friend and literary helpmate Bill Kittredge. That summer Ray fell in love with Diane Cecily, an editor at the University of Montana, whom he met at Kittredge’s birthday party. “That’s when the serious drinking began. It broke my heart and hurt the children. It changed everything.” “By fall of '74", writes Carver, “he was more dead than alive. I had to drop out of the Ph.D. program so I could get him cleaned up and drive him to his classes”. Over the next several years, Maryann’s husband physically abused her. Friends urged her to leave Raymond. “But I couldn’t. I really wanted to hang in there for the long haul. I thought I could outlast the drinking. I’d do anything it took. I loved Ray, first, last and always.” Carver describes, without a trace of rancor, what finally put her over the edge. In the fall of '78, with a new teaching position at the University of Texas at El Paso, Ray started seeing Tess Gallagher, a writer from Port Angeles, who would become his muse and wife near the end of his life. “It was like a contretemps. He tried to call me to talk about where we were. I missed the calls. He knew he was about to invite Tess to Thanksgiving.” So he wrote a letter instead. “I thought, I’ve gone through all those years fighting to keep it all balanced. Here it was, coming at me again, the same thing. I had to get on with my own life. But I never fell out of love with him.” Second marriage Carver met the poet Tess Gallagher at a writers’ conference in Dallas, Texas, in November 1977. Beginning in January, 1979, Carver and Gallagher lived together in El Paso, Texas; in a borrowed cabin near Port Angeles, Washington; and in Tucson, Arizona. In 1980, the two moved to Syracuse, New York, where Gallagher had been appointed the coordinator of the creative writing program at Syracuse University; Carver taught as a professor in the English department. He and Gallagher jointly purchased a house in Syracuse, at 832 Maryland Avenue. In ensuing years, the house became so popular that the couple had to hang a sign outside that read “Writers At Work” in order to be left alone. In 1982, Carver and first wife, Maryann, were divorced. He married Gallagher in 1988 in Reno, Nevada. Six weeks later, on August 2, 1988, Carver died in Port Angeles, Washington, from lung cancer at the age of 50. In the same year, he was inducted into the American Academy of Arts and Letters. In December 2006, Gallagher published an essay in The Sun magazine, titled “Instead of Dying”, about alcoholism and Carver’s having maintained his sobriety. The essay is an adaptation of a talk she initially delivered at the Welsh Academy’s Academi Intoxication Conference in 2006. The first lines read: “Instead of dying from alcohol, Raymond Carver chose to live. I would meet him five months after this choice, so I never knew the Ray who drank, except by report and through the characters and actions of his stories and poems.” Death On August 2, 1988, Carver died from lung cancer at the age of 50. He is buried at Ocean View Cemetery in Port Angeles, Washington. The inscription on his tombstone reads: LATE FRAGMENT And did you get what you wanted from this life, even so? I did. And what did you want? To call myself beloved, to feel myself beloved on the earth. His poem “Gravy” is also inscribed. As Carver’s will directed, Tess Gallagher assumed the management of his literary estate. Memorials In Carver’s birth town of Clatskanie, Oregon, a memorial park and statue were constructed in the late 2000s spearheaded by the local Friends of the Library, using mostly local donations. Tess Gallagher was present at the dedication. It is located in the old town on the corner of Lillich and Nehalem Streets, across from the library. A block away, the building where Raymond Carver was born still stands. There is a plaque of Carver in the foyer. Legacy and posthumous publications The novelist Chuck Kinder published Honeymooners: A Cautionary Tale (2001), a roman à clef about his friendship with Carver in the 1970s. Carver’s high school sweetheart and first wife, Maryann Burk Carver, wrote a memoir of her years with Carver, What it Used to be Like: A Portrait of My Marriage to Raymond Carver (2006). The New York Times Book Review and San Francisco Chronicle named Carol Sklenicka’s unauthorized biography, Raymond Carver: A Writer’s Life (2009), published by Scribner, one of the Best Ten Books of that year; and the San Francisco Chronicle deemed it: “exhaustively researched and definitive biography”. Carver’s widow, Tess Gallagher, refused to engage with Sklenica. His final (incomplete) collection of seven stories, titled Elephant in Britain (included in “Where I’m Calling From”) was composed in the five years before his death. The nature of these stories, especially “Errand”, have led to some speculation that Carver was preparing to write a novel. Only one piece of this work has survived– the fragment “The Augustine Notebooks”, first printed in No Heroics, Please. Tess Gallagher published five Carver stories posthumously in Call If You Need Me; one of the stories ("Kindling") won an O. Henry Award in 1999. In his lifetime Carver won five O. Henry Awards; these winning stories were “Are These Actual Miles” (originally titled “What is it?”) (1972), “Put Yourself in My Shoes” (1974), “Are You A Doctor?” (1975), “A Small, Good Thing” (1983), and “Errand” (1988). Tess Gallagher fought with Knopf for permission to republish the stories in What We Talk About When We Talk About Love as they were originally written by Carver, as opposed to the heavily edited and altered versions that appeared in 1981 under the editorship of Gordon Lish. The book, entitled Beginners, was released in hardback on October 1, 2009 in Great Britain, followed by its U.S. publication in the Library of America edition that collected all of Carver’s short fiction in a single volume. Literary characteristics Carver’s career was dedicated to short stories and poetry. He described himself as “inclined toward brevity and intensity” and “hooked on writing short stories” (in the foreword of Where I’m Calling From, a collection published in 1988 and a recipient of an honorable mention in the 2006 New York Times article citing the best works of fiction of the previous 25 years). Another stated reason for his brevity was "that the story [or poem] can be written and read in one sitting." This was not simply a preference but, particularly at the beginning of his career, a practical consideration as he juggled writing with work. His subject matter was often focused on blue-collar experience, and was clearly reflective of his own life. Characteristics of minimalism are generally seen as one of the hallmarks of Carver’s work, although, as reviewer David Wiegand notes: Carver never thought of himself as a minimalist or in any category, for that matter. “He rejected categories generally,” Sklenicka says. “I don’t think he had an abstract mind at all. He just wasn’t built that way, which is why he’s so good at picking the right details that will stand for many things.” Carver’s editor at Esquire, Gordon Lish, was instrumental in shaping Carver’s prose in this direction– where his earlier tutor John Gardner had advised Carver to use fifteen words instead of twenty-five, Lish instructed Carver to use five in place of fifteen. Objecting to the “surgical amputation and transplantation” of Lish’s heavy editing, Carver eventually broke with him. During this time, Carver also submitted poetry to James Dickey, then poetry editor of Esquire. Carver’s style has also been described as dirty realism, which connected him with a group of writers in the 1970s and 1980s that included Richard Ford and Tobias Wolff (two writers with whom Carver was closely acquainted), as well as others such as Ann Beattie, Frederick Barthelme, and Jayne Anne Phillips. With the exception of Beattie, who wrote about upper-middle-class people, these were writers who focused on sadness and loss in the everyday lives of ordinary people—often lower-middle class or isolated and marginalized people. Works Fiction Collections * Will You Please Be Quiet, Please? (first published 1976) * Furious Seasons and other stories (1977) * What We Talk About When We Talk About Love (1981) * Cathedral (1983) * Elephant (1988)– this title only published in Great Britain; included as a section of Where I’m Calling From: New & Selected Stories in the U.S. Compilations * Where I’m Calling From: New & Selected Stories (1988) * Short Cuts: Selected Stories (1993)– published to accompany the Robert Altman film Short Cuts * Collected Stories (2009)– complete short fiction including Beginners Poetry Collections * Near Klamath (1968) * Winter Insomnia (1970) * At Night The Salmon Move (1976) * Fires (1983) * Where Water Comes Together With Other Water (1985) * Ultramarine (1986) * A New Path To The Waterfall (1989) * Gravy (Unknown year) Compilations * In a Marine Light: Selected Poems (1988) * All of Us: The Collected Poems (1996) Screenplays * Dostoevsky (1985, with Tess Gallagher) Films and theatre adaptations * Short Cuts directed by Robert Altman (1993), based on nine Carver short stories and a poem * Everything Goes directed by Andrew Kotatko (2004), starring Hugo Weaving and Abbie Cornish, based on Carver’s short story “Why Don’t You Dance?” * Whoever Was Using This Bed, also directed by Andrew Kotatko (2016), starring Jean-Marc Barr, Radha Mitchell and Jane Birkin, based on Carver’s short story of the same name * Jindabyne directed by Ray Lawrence (2006), based on Carver’s short story “So Much Water So Close to Home” * “After The Denim” directed by Gregory D. Goyins (2010) starring Tom Bower and Karen Landry, based on Carver’s short story “If It Please You” * Everything Must Go directed by Dan Rush (2010), and starring Will Ferrell, based on Carver’s short story “Why Don’t You Dance?” * Carver a production directed by William Gaskill at London’s Arcola Theatre in 1995, adapted from five Carver short stories including “What’s In Alaska?” “Put Yourself in My Shoes” and “Intimacy” * Studentova žena (Croatian) directed by Goran Kovač, based on “The Student’s Wife” * Carousel (Croatian) directed by Toma Zidić, inspired by “Ashtray” * Men Who Don’t Work directed by Alexander Atkins and Andrew Franks, based on “What Do You Do in San Francisco?” * Birdman or (The Unexpected Virtue of Ignorance), directed by Alejandro G. Iñárritu, depicts the mounting of a Broadway production of “What We Talk About When We Talk About Love” as its central storyline. The film’s main character, Riggan Thomson, attributes his choice of acting as a profession to a complimentary note he once received from Raymond Carver written on a cocktail napkin. The film also preludes with Carver’s poem “Late Fragment.” In February 2015, Birdman won four Oscars, including the Academy Award for Best Picture. Musical adaptions * Everything’s Turning to White is a folk rock track written and performed by Paul Kelly on the album So Much Water So Close to Home (1989), which was based on Carver’s short story of the same name. References Wikipedia—https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Raymond_Carver

Geoffrey Chaucer (c. 1343 – 25 October 1400), known as the Father of English literature, is widely considered the greatest English poet of the Middle Ages and was the first poet to have been buried in Poet's Corner of Westminster Abbey. While he achieved fame during his lifetime as an author, philosopher, alchemist and astronomer, composing a scientific treatise on the astrolabe for his ten year-old son Lewis, Chaucer also maintained an active career in the civil service as a bureaucrat, courtier and diplomat. Among his many works, which include The Book of the Duchess, the House of Fame, the Legend of Good Women and Troilus and Criseyde, he is best known today for The Canterbury Tales. Chaucer is a crucial figure in developing the legitimacy of the vernacular, Middle English, at a time when the dominant literary languages in England were French and Latin. Geoffrey Chaucer was born in London sometime around 1343, though the precise date and location of his birth remain unknown. His father and grandfather were both London vintners; several previous generations had been merchants in Ipswich. (His family name derives from the French chausseur, meaning "shoemaker".)[1] In 1324 John Chaucer, Geoffrey's father, was kidnapped by an aunt in the hope of marrying the twelve-year-old boy to her daughter in an attempt to keep property in Ipswich. The aunt was imprisoned and the £250 fine levied suggests that the family was financially secure—bourgeois, if not elite.[2] John Chaucer married Agnes Copton, who, in 1349, inherited properties including 24 shops in London from her uncle, Hamo de Copton, who is described in a will dated 3 April 1354 and listed in the City Hustings Roll as "moneyer"; he was said to be moneyer at the Tower of London. In the City Hustings Roll 110, 5, Ric II, dated June 1380, Geoffrey Chaucer refers to himself as me Galfridum Chaucer, filium Johannis Chaucer, Vinetarii, Londonie' . While records concerning the lives of his contemporary poets, William Langland and the Pearl Poet are practically non-existent, since Chaucer was a public servant, his official life is very well documented, with nearly five hundred written items testifying to his career. The first of the "Chaucer Life Records" appears in 1357, in the household accounts of Elizabeth de Burgh, the Countess of Ulster, when he became the noblewoman's page through his father's connections.[3] She was married to Lionel, Duke of Clarence, the second surviving son of the king, Edward III, and the position brought the teenage Chaucer into the close court circle, where he was to remain for the rest of his life. He also worked as a courtier, a diplomat, and a civil servant, as well as working for the king, collecting and inventorying scrap metal. In 1359, in the early stages of the Hundred Years' War, Edward III invaded France and Chaucer travelled with Lionel of Antwerp, 1st Duke of Clarence, Elizabeth's husband, as part of the English army. In 1360, he was captured during the siege of Rheims. Edward paid £16 for his ransom, a considerable sum, and Chaucer was released. After this, Chaucer's life is uncertain, but he seems to have travelled in France, Spain, and Flanders, possibly as a messenger and perhaps even going on a pilgrimage to Santiago de Compostela. Around 1366, Chaucer married Philippa (de) Roet. She was a lady-in-waiting to Edward III's queen, Philippa of Hainault, and a sister of Katherine Swynford, who later (ca. 1396) became the third wife of John of Gaunt. It is uncertain how many children Chaucer and Philippa had, but three or four are most commonly cited. His son, Thomas Chaucer, had an illustrious career, as chief butler to four kings, envoy to France, and Speaker of the House of Commons. Thomas's daughter, Alice, married the Duke of Suffolk. Thomas's great-grandson (Geoffrey's great-great-grandson), John de la Pole, Earl of Lincoln, was the heir to the throne designated by Richard III before he was deposed. Geoffrey's other children probably included Elizabeth Chaucy, a nun at Barking Abbey. Agnes, an attendant at Henry IV's coronation; and another son, Lewis Chaucer. Chaucer’s “Treatise on the Astrolabe” was written for Lewis. Chaucer probably studied law in the Inner Temple (an Inn of Court) at this time. He became a member of the royal court of Edward III as a varlet de chambre, yeoman, or esquire on 20 June 1367, a position which could entail a wide variety of tasks. His wife also received a pension for court employment. He travelled abroad many times, at least some of them in his role as a valet. In 1368, he may have attended the wedding of Lionel of Antwerp to Violante Visconti, daughter of Galeazzo II Visconti, in Milan. Two other literary stars of the era were in attendance: Jean Froissart and Petrarch. Around this time, Chaucer is believed to have written The Book of the Duchess in honour of Blanche of Lancaster, the late wife of John of Gaunt, who died in 1369. Chaucer travelled to Picardy the next year as part of a military expedition; in 1373 he visited Genoa and Florence. Numerous scholars such as Skeat, Boitani, and Rowland suggested that, on this Italian trip, he came into contact with Petrarch or Boccaccio. They introduced him to medieval Italian poetry, the forms and stories of which he would use later. The purposes of a voyage in 1377 are mysterious, as details within the historical record conflict. Later documents suggest it was a mission, along with Jean Froissart, to arrange a marriage between the future King Richard II and a French princess, thereby ending the Hundred Years War. If this was the purpose of their trip, they seem to have been unsuccessful, as no wedding occurred. In 1378, Richard II sent Chaucer as an envoy (secret dispatch) to the Visconti and to Sir John Hawkwood, English condottiere (mercenary leader) in Milan. It has been speculated that it was Hawkwood on whom Chaucer based his character the Knight in the Canterbury Tales, for a description matches that of a fourteenth-century condottiere. A possible indication that his career as a writer was appreciated came when Edward III granted Chaucer "a gallon of wine daily for the rest of his life" for some unspecified task. This was an unusual grant, but given on a day of celebration, St George's Day, 1374, when artistic endeavours were traditionally rewarded, it is assumed to have been another early poetic work. It is not known which, if any, of Chaucer's extant works prompted the reward, but the suggestion of him as poet to a king places him as a precursor to later poets laureate. Chaucer continued to collect the liquid stipend until Richard II came to power, after which it was converted to a monetary grant on 18 April 1378. Chaucer obtained the very substantial job of Comptroller of the Customs for the port of London, which he began on 8 June 1374.[10] He must have been suited for the role as he continued in it for twelve years, a long time in such a post at that time. His life goes undocumented for much of the next ten years, but it is believed that he wrote (or began) most of his famous works during this period. He was mentioned in law papers of 4 May 1380, involved in the raptus of Cecilia Chaumpaigne. What raptus means is unclear, but the incident seems to have been resolved quickly and did not leave a stain on Chaucer's reputation. It is not known if Chaucer was in the city of London at the time of the Peasants' Revolt, but if he was, he would have seen its leaders pass almost directly under his apartment window at Aldgate. While still working as comptroller, Chaucer appears to have moved to Kent, being appointed as one of the commissioners of peace for Kent, at a time when French invasion was a possibility. He is thought to have started work on The Canterbury Tales in the early 1380s. He also became a Member of Parliament for Kent in 1386. There is no further reference after this date to Philippa, Chaucer's wife, and she is presumed to have died in 1387. He survived the political upheavals caused by the Lords Appellants, despite the fact that Chaucer knew some of the men executed over the affair quite well. On 12 July 1389, Chaucer was appointed the clerk of the king's works, a sort of foreman organising most of the king's building projects.[12] No major works were begun during his tenure, but he did conduct repairs on Westminster Palace, St. George's Chapel, Windsor, continue building the wharf at the Tower of London, and build the stands for a tournament held in 1390. It may have been a difficult job, but it paid well: two shillings a day, more than three times his salary as a comptroller. Chaucer was also appointed keeper of the lodge at the King’s park in Feckenham, which was a largely honorary appointment.[13] In September 1390, records say that he was robbed, and possibly injured, while conducting the business, and it was shortly after, on 17 June 1391, that he stopped working in this capacity. Almost immediately, on 22 June, he began as Deputy Forester in the royal forest of North Petherton, Somerset. This was no sinecure, with maintenance an important part of the job, although there were many opportunities to derive profit. He was granted an annual pension of twenty pounds by Richard II in 1394.[14] It is believed that Chaucer stopped work on the Canterbury Tales sometime towards the end of this decade. Not long after the overthrow of his patron, Richard II, in 1399, Chaucer's name fades from the historical record. The last few records of his life show his pension renewed by the new king, and his taking of a lease on a residence within the close of Westminster Abbey on 24 December 1399.[15] Although Henry IV renewed the grants assigned to Chaucer by Richard, Chaucer's own The Complaint of Chaucer to his Purse hints that the grants might not have been paid. The last mention of Chaucer is on 5 June 1400, when some monies owed to him were paid. He is believed to have died of unknown causes on 25 October 1400, but there is no firm evidence for this date, as it comes from the engraving on his tomb, erected more than one hundred years after his death. There is some speculation—most recently in Terry Jones' book Who Murdered Chaucer? : A Medieval Mystery—that he was murdered by enemies of Richard II or even on the orders of his successor Henry IV, but the case is entirely circumstantial. Chaucer was buried in Westminster Abbey in London, as was his right owing to his status as a tenant of the Abbey's close. In 1556, his remains were transferred to a more ornate tomb, making Chaucer the first writer interred in the area now known as Poets' Corner. Work Chaucer's first major work, The Book of the Duchess, was an elegy for Blanche of Lancaster (who died in 1369). It is possible that this work was commissioned by her husband John of Gaunt, as he granted Chaucer a £10 annuity on 13 June 1374. This would seem to place the writing of The Book of the Duchess between the years 1369 and 1374. Two other early works by Chaucer were Anelida and Arcite and The House of Fame. Chaucer wrote many of his major works in a prolific period when he held the job of customs comptroller for London (1374 to 1386). His Parlement of Foules, The Legend of Good Women and Troilus and Criseyde all date from this time. Also it is believed that he started work on The Canterbury Tales in the early 1380s. Chaucer is best known as the writer of The Canterbury Tales, which is a collection of stories told by fictional pilgrims on the road to the cathedral at Canterbury; these tales would help to shape English literature. The Canterbury Tales contrasts with other literature of the period in the naturalism of its narrative, the variety of stories the pilgrims tell and the varied characters who are engaged in the pilgrimage. Many of the stories narrated by the pilgrims seem to fit their individual characters and social standing, although some of the stories seem ill-fitting to their narrators, perhaps as a result of the incomplete state of the work. Chaucer drew on real life for his cast of pilgrims: the innkeeper shares the name of a contemporary keeper of an inn in Southwark, and real-life identities for the Wife of Bath, the Merchant, the Man of Law and the Student have been suggested. The many jobs that Chaucer held in medieval society—page, soldier, messenger, valet, bureaucrat, foreman and administrator—probably exposed him to many of the types of people he depicted in the Tales. He was able to shape their speech and satirise their manners in what was to become popular literature among people of the same types. Chaucer's works are sometimes grouped into first a French period, then an Italian period and finally an English period, with Chaucer being influenced by those countries' literatures in turn. Certainly Troilus and Criseyde is a middle period work with its reliance on the forms of Italian poetry, little known in England at the time, but to which Chaucer was probably exposed during his frequent trips abroad on court business. In addition, its use of a classical subject and its elaborate, courtly language sets it apart as one of his most complete and well-formed works. In Troilus and Criseyde Chaucer draws heavily on his source, Boccaccio, and on the late Latin philosopher Boethius. However, it is The Canterbury Tales, wherein he focuses on English subjects, with bawdy jokes and respected figures often being undercut with humour, that has cemented his reputation. Chaucer also translated such important works as Boethius' Consolation of Philosophy and The Romance of the Rose by Guillaume de Lorris (extended by Jean de Meun). However, while many scholars maintain that Chaucer did indeed translate part of the text of Roman de la Rose as The Romaunt of the Rose, others claim that this has been effectively disproved. Many of his other works were very loose translations of, or simply based on, works from continental Europe. It is in this role that Chaucer receives some of his earliest critical praise. Eustache Deschamps wrote a ballade on the great translator and called himself a "nettle in Chaucer's garden of poetry". In 1385 Thomas Usk made glowing mention of Chaucer, and John Gower, Chaucer's main poetic rival of the time, also lauded him. This reference was later edited out of Gower's Confessio Amantis and it has been suggested by some that this was because of ill feeling between them, but it is likely due simply to stylistic concerns. One other significant work of Chaucer's is his Treatise on the Astrolabe, possibly for his own son, that describes the form and use of that instrument in detail and is sometimes cited as the first example of technical writing in the English language. Although much of the text may have come from other sources, the treatise indicates that Chaucer was versed in science in addition to his literary talents. Another scientific work discovered in 1952, Equatorie of the Planetis, has similar language and handwriting compared to some considered to be Chaucer's and it continues many of the ideas from the Astrolabe. Furthermore, it contains an example of early European encryption.[16] The attribution of this work to Chaucer is still uncertain. Selected Works The Canterbury Tales Troilus and Criseyde Treatise on the Astrolabe The Legend of Good Women Parlement of Foules Anelida and Arcite The House of Fame The Book of the Duchess Roman de la Rose Translation of Boethius' Consolation of Philosophy (as Boece) References Wikipedia – http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Geoffrey_Chaucer

Stephen Crane (November 1, 1871 – June 5, 1900) was an American poet, novelist, and short story writer. Prolific throughout his short life, he wrote notable works in the Realist tradition as well as early examples of American Naturalism and Impressionism. He is recognized by modern critics as one of the most innovative writers of his generation. The ninth surviving child of Protestant Methodist parents, Crane began writing at the age of four and had published several articles by the age of 16.

Aleister Crowley (/ˈkroʊli/; born Edward Alexander Crowley; 12 October 1875– 1 December 1947) was an English occultist, ceremonial magician, poet, painter, novelist, and mountaineer. He founded the religion and philosophy of Thelema, identifying himself as the prophet entrusted with guiding humanity into the Æon of Horus in the early 20th century. Born to a wealthy Plymouth Brethren family in Royal Leamington Spa, Warwickshire, Crowley rejected this fundamentalist Christian faith to pursue an interest in Western esotericism. He was educated at the University of Cambridge, where he focused his attentions on mountaineering and poetry, resulting in several publications. Some biographers allege that here he was recruited into a British intelligence agency, further suggesting that he remained a spy throughout his life. In 1898 he joined the esoteric Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn, where he was trained in ceremonial magic by Samuel Liddell MacGregor Mathers and Allan Bennett. Moving to Boleskine House by Loch Ness in Scotland, he went mountaineering in Mexico with Oscar Eckenstein, before studying Hindu and Buddhist practices in India. He married Rose Edith Kelly and in 1904 they honeymooned in Cairo, Egypt, where Crowley claimed to have been contacted by a supernatural entity named Aiwass, who provided him with The Book of the Law, a sacred text that served as the basis for Thelema. Announcing the start of the Æon of Horus, The Book declared that its followers should adhere to the code of “Do what thou wilt” and seek to align themselves with their Will through the practice of magick. After an unsuccessful attempt to climb Kanchenjunga and a visit to India and China, Crowley returned to Britain, where he attracted attention as a prolific author of poetry, novels, and occult literature. In 1907, he and George Cecil Jones co-founded a Thelemite order, the A∴A∴, through which they propagated the religion. After spending time in Algeria, in 1912 he was initiated into another esoteric order, the German-based Ordo Templi Orientis (O.T.O.), rising to become the leader of its British branch, which he reformulated in accordance with his Thelemite beliefs. Through the O.T.O., Thelemite groups were established in Britain, Australia, and North America. Crowley spent the First World War in the United States, where he took up painting and campaigned for the German war effort against Britain, later revealing that he had infiltrated the pro-German movement to assist the British intelligence services. In 1920 he established the Abbey of Thelema, a religious commune in Cefalù, Sicily where he lived with various followers. His libertine lifestyle led to denunciations in the British press, and the Italian government evicted him in 1923. He divided the following two decades between France, Germany, and England, and continued to promote Thelema until his death. Crowley gained widespread notoriety during his lifetime, being a recreational drug experimenter, bisexual and an individualist social critic. He was denounced in the popular press as “the wickedest man in the world” and a Satanist. Crowley has remained a highly influential figure over Western esotericism and the counter-culture, and continues to be considered a prophet in Thelema. In 2002, a BBC poll ranked him as the seventy-third greatest Briton of all time. Early life Youth: 1875–94 Crowley was born as Edward Alexander Crowley at 30 Clarendon Square in Royal Leamington Spa, Warwickshire, on 12 October 1875. His father, Edward Crowley (1834–87), was trained as an engineer, but his share in a lucrative family brewing business, Crowley’s Alton Ales, had allowed him to retire before his son was born. His mother, Emily Bertha Bishop (1848–1917), came from a Devonshire-Somerset family and had a strained relationship with her son; she described him as “the Beast”, a name that he revelled in. The couple had been married at London’s Kensington Registry Office in November 1874, and were evangelical Christians. Crowley’s father had been born a Quaker, but had converted to the Exclusive Brethren, a faction of a Christian fundamentalist group known as the Plymouth Brethren, with Emily joining him upon marriage. Crowley’s father was particularly devout, spending his time as a travelling preacher for the sect and reading a chapter from the Bible to his wife and son after breakfast every day. Following the death of their baby daughter in 1880, in 1881 the Crowleys moved to Redhill, Surrey. At the age of 8, Crowley was sent to H.T. Habershon’s evangelical Christian boarding school in Hastings, and then to Ebor preparatory school in Cambridge, run by the Reverend Henry d’Arcy Champney, whom Crowley considered a sadist. In March 1887, when Crowley was 11, his father died of tongue cancer. Crowley described this as a turning point in his life, and he always maintained an admiration of his father, describing him as “his hero and his friend”. Inheriting a third of his father’s wealth, he began misbehaving at school and was harshly punished by Champney; Crowley’s family removed him from the school when he developed albuminuria. He then attended Malvern College and Tonbridge School, both of which he despised and left after a few terms. He became increasingly sceptical regarding Christianity, pointing out inconsistencies in the Bible to his religious teachers, and went against the Christian morality of his upbringing by smoking, masturbating, and having sex with prostitutes from whom he contracted gonorrhea. Sent to live with a Brethren tutor in Eastbourne, he undertook chemistry courses at Eastbourne College. Crowley developed interests in chess, poetry, and mountain climbing, and in 1894 climbed Beachy Head before visiting the Alps and joining the Scottish Mountaineering Club. The following year he returned to the Bernese Alps, climbing the Eiger, Trift, Jungfrau, Mönch, and Wetterhorn. Cambridge University: 1895–98 Having adopted the name of Aleister over Edward, in October 1895 Crowley began a three-year course at Trinity College, Cambridge, where he was entered for the Moral Science Tripos studying philosophy. With approval from his personal tutor, he changed to English literature, which was not then part of the curriculum offered. Crowley spent much of his time at university engaged in his pastimes, becoming president of the chess club and practising the game for two hours a day; he briefly considered a professional career as a chess player. Crowley also embraced his love of literature and poetry, particularly the works of Richard Francis Burton and Percy Bysshe Shelley. Many of his own poems appeared in student publications such as The Granta, Cambridge Magazine, and Cantab. He continued his mountaineering, going on holiday to the Alps to climb every year from 1894 to 1898, often with his friend Oscar Eckenstein, and in 1897 he made the first ascent of the Mönch without a guide. These feats led to his recognition in the Alpine mountaineering community. Crowley had his first significant mystical experience while on holiday in Stockholm in December 1896. Several biographers, including Lawrence Sutin, Richard Kaczynski, and Tobias Churton, believed that this was the result of Crowley’s first same-sex sexual experience, which enabled him to recognise his bisexuality. At Cambridge, Crowley maintained a vigorous sex life, largely with female prostitutes, from one of whom he caught syphilis, but eventually he took part in same-sex activities, despite their illegality. In October 1897, Crowley met Herbert Charles Pollitt (1871-1942), president of the Cambridge University Footlights Dramatic Club, and the two entered into a relationship. They broke apart because Pollitt did not share Crowley’s increasing interest in Western esotericism, a breakup that Crowley would regret for many years. Pollitt, collector and connoisseur, assumed the Christian name Jerome. He began to correspond with Oscar Wilde in 1898; Aubrey Beardsley designed him a bookplate for his use. In 1897, Crowley travelled to St Petersburg in Russia, later claiming that he was trying to learn Russian as he was considering a future diplomatic career there. Biographers Richard Spence and Tobias Churton suggested that Crowley had done so as an intelligence agent under the employ of the British secret service, speculating that he had been enlisted while at Cambridge. In October 1897, a brief illness triggered considerations of mortality and “the futility of all human endeavour”, and Crowley abandoned all thoughts of a diplomatic career in favour of pursuing an interest in the occult. In March 1898, he obtained A.E. Waite’s The Book of Black Magic and of Pacts (1898), and then Karl von Eckartshausen’s The Cloud Upon the Sanctuary (1896), furthering his occult interests. In 1898 Crowley privately published 100 copies of his poem Aceldama: A Place to Bury Strangers In, but it was not a particular success. That same year he published a string of other poems, including White Stains, a Decadent collection of erotic poetry that was printed abroad lest its publication be prohibited by the British authorities. In July 1898, he left Cambridge, not having taken any degree at all despite a “first class” showing in his 1897 exams and consistent “second class honours” results before that. The Golden Dawn: 1898–99 In August 1898, Crowley was in Zermatt, Switzerland, where he met the chemist Julian L. Baker, and the two began discussing their common interest in alchemy. Back in London, Baker introduced Crowley to George Cecil Jones, Baker’s brother in-law, and a fellow member of the occult society known as the Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn, which had been founded in 1888. Crowley was initiated into the Outer Order of the Golden Dawn on 18 November 1898 by the group’s leader, Samuel Liddell MacGregor Mathers. The ceremony took place in the Golden Dawn’s Isis-Urania Temple held at London’s Mark Masons Hall, where Crowley took the magical motto and name “Frater Perdurabo”, which he interpreted as “I shall endure to the end”. Biographers Richard Spence and Tobias Churton have suggested that Crowley joined the Order under the command of the British secret services to monitor the activities of Mathers, who was known to be a Carlist. Crowley moved into his own luxury flat at 67–69 Chancery Lane and soon invited a senior Golden Dawn member, Allan Bennett, to live with him as his personal magical tutor. Bennett taught Crowley more about ceremonial magic and the ritual use of drugs, and together they performed the rituals of the Goetia, until Bennett left for South Asia to study Buddhism. In November 1899, Crowley purchased Boleskine House in Foyers on the shore of Loch Ness in Scotland. He developed a love of Scottish culture, describing himself as the “Laird of Boleskine”, and took to wearing traditional highland dress, even during visits to London. He continued writing poetry, publishing Jezebel and Other Tragic Poems, Tales of Archais, Songs of the Spirit, Appeal to the American Republic, and Jephthah in 1898–99; most gained mixed reviews from literary critics, although Jephthah was considered a particular critical success. Crowley soon progressed through the lower grades of the Golden Dawn, and was ready to enter the group’s inner Second Order. He was unpopular in the group; his bisexuality and libertine lifestyle had gained him a bad reputation, and he had developed feuds with some of the members, including W.B. Yeats. When the Golden Dawn’s London lodge refused to initiate Crowley into the Second Order, he visited Mathers in Paris, who personally admitted him into the Adeptus Minor Grade. A schism had developed between Mathers and the London members of the Golden Dawn, who were unhappy with his autocratic rule. Acting under Mathers’ orders, Crowley– with the help of his mistress and fellow initiate Elaine Simpson– attempted to seize the Vault of the Adepts, a temple space at 36 Blythe Road in West Kensington, from the London lodge members. When the case was taken to court, the judge ruled in favour of the London lodge, as they had paid for the space’s rent, leaving both Crowley and Mathers isolated from the group. Spence suggested that the entire scenario was part of an intelligence operation to undermine Mathers’ authority. Mexico, India, Paris, and marriage: 1900–03 In 1900, Crowley travelled to Mexico via the United States, settling in Mexico City and taking a local woman as his mistress. Developing a love of the country, he continued experimenting with ceremonial magic, working with John Dee’s Enochian invocations. He later claimed to have been initiated into Freemasonry while there, and he wrote a play based on Richard Wagner’s Tannhäuser as well as a series of poems, published as Oracles (1905). Eckenstein joined him later that year, and together they climbed several mountains, including Iztaccihuatl, Popocatepetl, and Colima, the latter of which they had to abandon owing to a volcanic eruption. Spence has suggested that the purpose of the trip might have been to explore Mexican oil prospects for British intelligence. Leaving Mexico, Crowley headed to San Francisco before sailing for Hawaii aboard the Nippon Maru. On the ship he had a brief affair with a married woman named Mary Alice Rogers; saying he had fallen in love with her, he wrote a series of poems about the romance, published as Alice: An Adultery (1903). Briefly stopping at Japan and Hong Kong, Crowley reached Ceylon, where he met with Allan Bennett, who was there studying Shaivism. The pair spent some time in Kandy before Bennett decided to become a Buddhist monk in the Theravada tradition, travelling to Burma to do so. Crowley decided to tour India, devoting himself to the Hindu practice of raja yoga, from which he claimed to have achieved the spiritual state of dhyana. He spent much of this time studying at the Meenakshi Amman Temple in Madura, and also wrote poetry which was published as The Sword of Song (1904). He contracted malaria, and had to recuperate from the disease in Calcutta and Rangoon. In 1902, he was joined in India by Eckenstein and several other mountaineers: Guy Knowles, H. Pfannl, V. Wesseley, and Jules Jacot-Guillarmod. Together the Eckenstein-Crowley expedition attempted K2, which had never been climbed. On the journey, Crowley was afflicted with influenza, malaria, and snow blindness, and other expedition members were also struck with illness. They reached an altitude of 20,000 feet (6,100 m) before turning back. Arriving in Paris in November 1902, he hung out with his friend and future brother-in-law, the painter Gerald Kelly, and through him became a fixture of the Parisian arts scene, authoring a series of poems on the work of an acquaintance, the sculptor Auguste Rodin, published as Rodin in Rime (1907). One of those frequenting this milieu was W. Somerset Maugham, who after briefly meeting Crowley later used him as a model for the character of Oliver Haddo in his novel The Magician (1908). Returning to Boleskine in April 1903, in August Crowley wed Gerald’s sister Rose Edith Kelly in a “marriage of convenience” to prevent her entering an arranged marriage; the marriage appalled the Kelly family and damaged his friendship with Gerald. Heading on a honeymoon to Paris, Cairo, and then Ceylon, Crowley fell in love with Rose and worked to prove his affections. While on his honeymoon, he wrote her a series of love poems, published as Rosa Mundi and other Love Songs (1906), as well as authoring the religious satire Why Jesus Wept (1904). Developing Thelema Egypt and The Book of the Law: 1904 In February 1904, Crowley and Rose arrived in Cairo. Claiming to be a prince and princess, they rented an apartment in which Crowley set up a temple room and began invoking ancient Egyptian deities, while studying Islamic mysticism and Arabic. According to Crowley’s later account, Rose regularly became delirious and informed him “they are waiting for you”. On 18 March, she explained that “they” were the god Horus, and on 20 March proclaimed that “the Equinox of the Gods has come”. She led him to a nearby museum, where she showed him a seventh-century BCE mortuary stele known as the Stele of Ankh-ef-en-Khonsu; Crowley thought it important that the exhibit’s number was 666, the number of the beast in Christian belief, and in later years termed the artefact the “Stele of Revealing.” According to Crowley’s later statements, on 8 April he heard a disembodied voice that claimed to be that of Aiwass, the messenger of Horus, or Hoor-Paar-Kraat. Crowley said that he wrote down everything the voice told him over the course of the next three days, and titled it Liber L vel Legis or The Book of the Law. The book proclaimed that humanity was entering a new Aeon, and that Crowley would serve as its prophet. It stated that a supreme moral law was to be introduced in this Aeon, “Do what thou wilt shall be the whole of the Law,” and that people should learn to live in tune with their Will. This book, and the philosophy that it espoused, became the cornerstone of Crowley’s religion, Thelema. Crowley said that at the time he had been unsure what to do with The Book of the Law. Often resenting it, he said that he ignored the instructions which the text commanded him to perform, which included taking the Stele of Revealing from the museum, fortifying his own island, and translating the book into all the world’s languages. According to his account, he instead sent typescripts of the work to several occultists he knew, putting the manuscript away and ignoring it. Kangchenjunga and China: 1905–06 Returning to Boleskine, Crowley came to believe that Mathers had begun using magic against him, and the relationship between the two broke down. On 28 July 1905, Rose gave birth to Crowley’s first child, a daughter named Lilith, with Crowley authoring the pornographic Snowdrops From a Curate’s Garden to entertain his recuperating wife. He also founded a publishing company through which to publish his poetry, naming it the Society for the Propagation of Religious Truth in parody of the Society for Promoting Christian Knowledge. Among its first publications were Crowley’s Collected Works, edited by Ivor Back. His poetry often received strong reviews (either positive or negative), but never sold well. In an attempt to gain more publicity, he issued a reward of £100 for the best essay on his work. The winner of this was J. F. C. Fuller, a British Army officer and military historian, whose essay, The Star in the West (1907), heralded Crowley’s poetry as some of the greatest ever written. Crowley decided to climb Kangchenjunga in the Himalayas of Nepal, widely recognised as the world’s most treacherous mountain. Assembling a team consisting of Jacot-Guillarmod, Charles Adolphe Reymond, Alexis Pache, and Alcesti C. Rigo de Righi, the expedition was marred by much argument between Crowley and the others, who thought that he was reckless. They eventually mutinied against Crowley’s control, with the other climbers heading back down the mountain as nightfall approached despite Crowley’s warnings that it was too dangerous. Subsequently, Pache and several porters were killed in an accident, something for which Crowley was widely blamed by the mountaineering community. Spending time in Moharbhanj, where he took part in big game hunting and wrote the homoerotic work The Scented Garden, Crowley met up with Rose and Lilith in Calcutta before being forced to leave India after shooting dead a native man who tried to mug him. Briefly visiting Bennett in Burma, Crowley and his family decided to tour Southern China, hiring porters and a nanny for the purpose. Spence has suggested that this trip to China was orchestrated as part of a British intelligence scheme to monitor the region’s opium trade. Crowley smoked opium throughout the journey, which took the family from Tengyueh through to Yungchang, Tali, Yunnanfu, and then Hanoi. On the way he spent much time on spiritual and magical work, reciting the “Bornless Ritual”, an invocation to his Holy Guardian Angel, on a daily basis. While Rose and Lilith returned to Europe, Crowley headed to Shanghai to meet old friend Elaine Simpson, who was fascinated by The Book of the Law; together they performed rituals in an attempt to contact Aiwass. Crowley then sailed to Japan and Canada, before continuing to New York City, where he unsuccessfully solicited support for a second expedition up Kangchenjunga. Upon arrival in Britain, Crowley learned that his daughter Lilith had died of typhoid in Rangoon, something he later blamed on Rose’s increasing alcoholism. Under emotional distress, his health began to suffer, and he underwent a series of surgical operations. He began short-lived romances with actress Vera “Lola” Neville (née Snepp) and author Ada Leverson, while Rose gave birth to Crowley’s second daughter, Lola Zaza, in February 1907. The A∴A∴ and the Holy Books of Thelema: 1907–09 With his old mentor George Cecil Jones, Crowley continued performing the Abramelin rituals at the Ashdown Park Hotel in Coulsdon, Surrey. Crowley claimed that in doing so he attained samadhi, or union with Godhead, thereby marking a turning point in his life. Making heavy use of hashish during these rituals, he wrote an essay on “The Psychology of Hashish” (1909) in which he championed the drug as an aid to mysticism. He also claimed to have been contacted once again by Aiwass in late October and November 1907, adding that Aiwass dictated two further texts to him, “Liber VII” and “Liber Cordis Cincti Serpente”, both of which were later classified in the corpus of Holy Books of Thelema. Crowley wrote down more Thelemic Holy Books during the last two months of the year, including “Liber LXVI”, “Liber Arcanorum”, “Liber Porta Lucis, Sub Figura X”, “Liber Tau”, “Liber Trigrammaton” and “Liber DCCCXIII vel Ararita”, which he again claimed to have received from a preternatural source. Crowley stated that in June 1909, when the manuscript of The Book of the Law was rediscovered at Boleskine, he developed the opinion that Thelema represented objective truth. Crowley’s inheritance was running out. Trying to earn money, he was hired by George Montagu Bennett, the Earl of Tankerville, to help protect him from witchcraft; recognising Bennett’s paranoia as being based in his cocaine addiction, Crowley took him on holiday to France and Morocco to recuperate. In 1907, he also began taking in paying students, whom he instructed in occult and magical practice. Victor Neuburg, whom Crowley met in February 1907, became his sexual partner and closest disciple; in 1908 the pair toured northern Spain before heading to Tangier, Morocco. The following year Neuburg stayed at Boleskine, where he and Crowley engaged in sadomasochism. Crowley continued to write prolifically, producing such works of poetry as Ambergris, Clouds Without Water, and Konx Om Pax, as well as his first attempt at an autobiography, The World’s Tragedy. Recognising the popularity of short horror stories, Crowley wrote his own, some of which were published, and he also published several articles in Vanity Fair, a magazine edited by his friend Frank Harris. He also wrote Liber 777, a book of magical and Qabalistic correspondences that borrowed from Mathers and Bennett. In November 1907, Crowley and Jones decided to found an occult order to act as a successor to the Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn, being aided in doing so by Fuller. The result was the A∴A∴. The group’s headquarters and temple were situated at 124 Victoria Street in central London, and their rites borrowed much from those of the Golden Dawn, but with an added Thelemic basis. Its earliest members included solicitor Richard Noel Warren, artist Austin Osman Spare, Horace Sheridan-Bickers, author George Raffalovich, Francis Henry Everard Joseph Feilding, engineer Herbert Edward Inman, Kenneth Ward, and Charles Stansfeld Jones. In March 1909, Crowley began production of a biannual periodical titled The Equinox. He billed this periodical, which was to become the “Official Organ” of the A∴A∴, as “The Review of Scientific Illuminism”. Crowley had become increasingly frustrated with Rose’s alcoholism, and in November 1909 he divorced her on the grounds of his own adultery. Lola was entrusted to Rose’s care; the couple remained friends and Rose continued to live at Boleskine. Her alcoholism worsened, and as a result she was institutionalised in September 1911. Algeria and the Rites of Eleusis: 1909–11 In November 1909, Crowley and Neuburg travelled to Algeria, touring the desert from El Arba to Aumale, Bou Saâda, and then Dā'leh Addin, with Crowley reciting the Quran on a daily basis. During the trip he invoked the thirty aethyrs of Enochian magic, with Neuburg recording the results, later published in The Equinox as The Vision and the Voice. Following a mountaintop sex magic ritual, Crowley also performed an invocation to the demon Choronzon involving blood sacrifice, considering the results to be a watershed in his magical career. Returning to London in January 1910, Crowley found that Mathers was suing him for publishing Golden Dawn secrets in The Equinox; the court found in favour of Crowley. The case was widely reported on in the press, with Crowley gaining wider fame. Crowley enjoyed this, and played up to the sensationalist stereotype of being a Satanist and advocate of human sacrifice, despite being neither. The publicity attracted new members to the A∴A∴, among them Frank Bennett, James Bayley, Herbert Close, and James Windram. The Australian violinist Leila Waddell soon became Crowley’s lover. Deciding to expand his teachings to a wider audience, Crowley developed the Rites of Artemis, a public performance of magic and symbolism featuring A∴A∴ members personifying various deities. It was first performed at the A∴A∴ headquarters, with attendees given a fruit punch containing peyote to enhance their experience. Various members of the press attended, and reported largely positively on it. In October and November 1910, Crowley decided to stage something similar, the Rites of Eleusis, at Caxton Hall, Westminster; this time press reviews were mixed. Crowley came under particular criticism from West de Wend Fenton, editor of The Looking Glass newspaper, who called him “one of the most blasphemous and cold-blooded villains of modern times”.i Fenton’s articles suggested that Crowley and Jones were involved in homosexual activity; Crowley did not mind, but Jones unsuccessfully sued for libel. Fuller broke off his friendship and involvement with Crowley over the scandal, and Crowley and Neuburg returned to Algeria for further magical workings. The Equinox continued publishing, and various books of literature and poetry were also published under its imprint, like Crowley’s Ambergris, The Winged Beetle, and The Scented Garden, as well as Neuburg’s The Triumph of Pan and Ethel Archer’s The Whirlpool. In 1911, Crowley and Waddell holidayed in Montigny-sur-Loing, where he wrote prolifically, producing poems, short stories, plays, and 19 works on magic and mysticism, including the two final Holy Books of Thelema. In Paris, he met Mary Desti, who became his next “Scarlet Woman”, with the two undertaking magical workings in St. Moritz; Crowley believed that one of the Secret Chiefs, Ab-ul-Diz, was speaking through her. Based on Desti’s statements when in trance, Crowley wrote the two-volume Book 4 (1912–13) and at the time developed the spelling “magick” in reference to the paranormal phenomenon as a means of distinguishing it from the stage magic of illusionists. Ordo Templi Orientis and the Paris Working: 1912–14 In early 1912, Crowley published The Book of Lies, a work of mysticism that biographer Lawrence Sutin described as “his greatest success in merging his talents as poet, scholar, and magus”. The German occultist Theodor Reuss later accused him of publishing some of the secrets of his own occult order, the Ordo Templi Orientis (O.T.O.), within The Book. Crowley convinced Reuss that the similarities were coincidental, and the two became friends. Reuss appointed Crowley as head of the O.T.O’s British branch, the Mysteria Mystica Maxima (MMM), and at a ceremony in Berlin Crowley adopted the magical name of Baphomet and was proclaimed "X° Supreme Rex and Sovereign Grand Master General of Ireland, Iona, and all the Britons". With Reuss’ permission, Crowley set about advertising the MMM and re-writing many O.T.O. rituals, which were then based largely on Freemasonry; his incorporation of Thelemite elements proved controversial in the group. Fascinated by the O.T.O’s emphasis on sex magic, Crowley devised a magical working based on anal sex and incorporated it into the syllabus for those O.T.O. members who had been initiated into the eleventh degree. In March 1913 Crowley acted as producer for The Ragged Ragtime Girls, a group of female violinists led by Waddell, as they performed at London’s Old Tivoli theatre. They subsequently performed in Moscow for six weeks, where Crowley had a sadomasochistic relationship with the Hungarian Anny Ringler. In Moscow, Crowley continued to write plays and poetry, including “Hymn to Pan”, and the Gnostic Mass, a Thelemic ritual that became a key part of O.T.O. liturgy. Churton suggested that Crowley had travelled to Moscow on the orders of British intelligence to spy on revolutionary elements in the city. In January 1914 Crowley and Neuburg settled in to an apartment in Paris, where the former was involved in the controversy surrounding Jacob Epstein’s new monument to Oscar Wilde. Together Crowley and Neuburg performed the six-week “Paris Working”, a period of intense ritual involving strong drug use in which they invoked the gods Mercury and Jupiter. As part of the ritual, the couple performed acts of sex magic together, at times being joined by journalist Walter Duranty. Inspired by the results of the Working, Crowley authored Liber Agapé, a treatise on sex magic. Following the Paris Working, Neuburg began to distance himself from Crowley, resulting in an argument in which Crowley cursed him. United States: 1914–19 By 1914 Crowley was living a hand-to-mouth existence, relying largely on donations from A∴A∴ members and dues payments made to O.T.O. In May he transferred ownership of Boleskine House to the MMM for financial reasons, and in July he went mountaineering in the Swiss Alps. During this time the First World War broke out. After recuperating from a bout of phlebitis, Crowley set sail for the United States aboard the RMS Lusitania in October 1914. Arriving in New York City, he moved into a hotel and began earning money writing for the American edition of Vanity Fair and undertaking freelance work for the famed astrologer Evangeline Adams. In the city, he continued experimenting with sex magic, through the use of masturbation, female prostitutes, and male clients of a Turkish bathhouse; all of these encounters were documented in his diaries. Professing to be of Irish ancestry and a supporter of Irish independence from Great Britain, Crowley began to espouse support for Germany in their war against Britain. He became involved in New York’s pro-German movement, and in January 1915 German spy George Sylvester Viereck employed him as a writer for his propagandist paper, The Fatherland, which was dedicated to keeping the US neutral in the conflict. In later years, detractors denounced Crowley as a traitor to Britain for this action. In reality, Crowley was a double agent, working for the British intelligence services to infiltrate and undermine Germany’s operation in New York. Many of his articles in The Fatherland were hyperbolic, for instance comparing Kaiser Wilhelm II to Jesus Christ; in July 1915 he orchestrated a publicity stunt– reported on by The New York Times– in which he declared independence for Ireland in front of the Statue of Liberty; the real intention was to make the German lobby appear ridiculous in the eyes of the American public. It has been argued that he encouraged the German Navy to destroy the Lusitania, informing them that it would ensure the US stayed out of the war, while in reality hoping that it would bring the US into the war on Britain’s side. Crowley entered into a relationship with Jeanne Robert Foster, with whom he toured the West Coast. In Vancouver, headquarters of the North American O.T.O., he met with Charles Stansfeld Jones and Wilfred Talbot Smith to discuss the propagation of Thelema on the continent. In Detroit he experimented with anhalonium at Parke-Davis, then visited Seattle, San Francisco, Santa Cruz, Los Angeles, San Diego, Tijuana, and the Grand Canyon, before returning to New York. There he befriended Ananda Coomaraswamy and his wife Alice Richardson; Crowley and Richardson performed sex magic in April 1916, following which she became pregnant and then miscarried. Later that year he took a “magical retirement” to a cabin by Lake Pasquaney owned by Evangeline Adams. There, he made heavy use of drugs and undertook a ritual after which he proclaimed himself “Master Therion”. He also wrote several short stories based on J.G. Frazer’s The Golden Bough and a work of literary criticism, The Gospel According to Bernard Shaw. In December he moved to New Orleans, his favourite US city, before spending February 1917 with evangelical Christian relatives in Titusville, Florida. Returning to New York, he moved in with artist and A∴A∴ member Leon Engers Kennedy, in May learning of his mother’s death. After the collapse of The Fatherland, Crowley continued his association with Viereck, who appointed him contributing editor of arts journal The International. Crowley used it to promote Thelema, but it soon ceased publication. He then moved to the studio apartment of Roddie Minor, who became his partner and Scarlet Woman. Through their rituals, Crowley believed that they were contacted by a preternatural entity named Alamantrah. The relationship soon ended. In 1918, Crowley went on a magical retreat in the wilderness of Esopus Island on the Hudson River. Here, he began a translation of the Tao Te Ching, painted Thelemic slogans on the riverside cliffs, and– he later claimed– experienced past life memories of being Ge Xuan, Pope Alexander VI, Alessandro Cagliostro, and Eliphas Levi. Back in New York, he moved to Greenwich Village, where he took Leah Hirsig as his lover and next Scarlet Woman. He took up painting as a hobby, exhibiting his work at the Greenwich Village Liberal Club and attracting the attention of the New York Evening World. With the financial assistance of sympathetic Freemasons, Crowley revived The Equinox with the first issue of volume III, known as “The Blue Equinox”. He spent mid-1919 on a climbing holiday in Montauk before returning to London in December. Abbey of Thelema: 1920–23 Now destitute and back in London, Crowley came under attack from the tabloid John Bull, which labelled him traitorous “scum” for his work with the German war effort; several friends aware of his intelligence work urged him to sue, but he decided not to. When he was suffering from asthma, a doctor prescribed him heroin, to which he soon became addicted. In January 1920, he moved to Paris, renting a house in Fontainebleau with Leah Hirsig; they were soon joined in a ménage à trois by Ninette Shumway, and also by Leah’s newborn daughter Anne “Poupée” Leah. Crowley had ideas of forming a community of Thelemites, which he called the Abbey of Thelema after the Abbaye de Thélème in François Rabelais’ satire Gargantua and Pantagruel. After consulting the I Ching, he chose Cefalù (on Sicily, Italy) as a location, and after arriving there, began renting the old Villa Santa Barbara as his Abbey on 2 April. Moving to the commune with Hirsig, Shumway, and their children Hansi, Howard, and Poupée, Crowley described the scenario as “perfectly happy... my idea of heaven.” They wore robes, and performed rituals to the sun god Ra at set times during the day, also occasionally performing the Gnostic Mass; the rest of the day they were left to follow their own interests. Undertaking widespread correspondences, Crowley continued to paint, wrote a commentary on The Book of the Law, and revised the third part of Book 4. He offered a libertine education for the children, allowing them to play all day and witness acts of sex magic. He occasionally travelled to Palermo to visit rent boys and buy supplies, including drugs; his heroin addiction came to dominate his life, and cocaine began to erode his nasal cavity. There was no cleaning rota, and wild dogs and cats wandered throughout the building, which soon became unsanitary. Poupée died in October 1920, and Ninette gave birth to a daughter, Astarte Lulu Panthea, soon afterwards. New followers continued to arrive at the Abbey to be taught by Crowley. Among them was film star Jane Wolfe, who arrived in July 1920, where she was initiated into the A∴A∴ and became Crowley’s secretary. Another was Cecil Frederick Russell, who often argued with Crowley, disliking the same-sex sexual magic that he was required to perform, and left after a year. More conducive was the Australian Thelemite Frank Bennett, who also spent several months at the Abbey. In February 1922, Crowley returned to Paris for a retreat in an unsuccessful attempt to kick his heroin addiction. He then went to London in search of money, where he published articles in The English Review criticising the Dangerous Drugs Act 1920 and wrote a novel, Diary of a Drug Fiend, completed in July. On publication, it received mixed reviews; he was lambasted by the Sunday Express, which called for its burning and used its influence to prevent further reprints. Subsequently, a young Thelemite named Raoul Loveday moved to the Abbey with his wife Betty May; while Loveday was devoted to Crowley, May detested him and life at the commune. She later said that Loveday was made to drink the blood of a sacrificed cat, and that they were required to cut themselves with razors every time they used the pronoun “I”. Loveday drank from a local polluted stream, soon developing a liver infection resulting in his death in February 1923. Returning to London, May told her story to the press. John Bull proclaimed Crowley “the wickedest man in the world” and “a man we’d like to hang”, and although Crowley deemed many of their accusations against him to be slanderous, he was unable to afford the legal fees to sue them. As a result, John Bull continued its attack, with its stories being repeated in newspapers throughout Europe and in North America. The Fascist government of Benito Mussolini learned of Crowley’s activities and in April 1923 he was given a deportation notice forcing him to leave Italy; without him, the Abbey closed. Later life Tunisia, Paris, and London: 1923–29 Crowley and Hirsig went to Tunis, where, dogged by continuing poor health, he unsuccessfully tried again to give up heroin, and began writing what he termed his “autohagiography”, The Confessions of Aleister Crowley. They were joined in Tunis by the Thelemite Norman Mudd, who became Crowley’s public relations consultant. Employing a local boy, Mohammad ben Brahim, as his servant, Crowley went with him on a retreat to Nefta, where they performed sex magic together. In January 1924, Crowley travelled to Nice, France, where he met with Frank Harris, underwent a series of nasal operations, and visited the Institute for the Harmonious Development of Man, and had a positive opinion of its founder, George Gurdjieff. Destitute, he took on a wealthy student, Alexander Zu Zolar, before taking on another American follower, Dorothy Olsen. Crowley took Olsen back to Tunisia for a magical retreat in Nefta, where he also wrote To Man (1924), a declaration of his own status as a prophet entrusted with bringing Thelema to humanity. After spending the winter in Paris, in early 1925 Crowley and Olsen returned to Tunis, where he wrote The Heart of the Master (1938) as an account of a vision he experienced in a trance. In March Olsen became pregnant, and Hirsig was called to take care of her; she miscarried, following which Crowley took Olsen back to France. Hirsig later distanced herself from Crowley, who then denounced her. According to Crowley, Reuss had named him head of the O.T.O. upon his death, but this was challenged by a leader of the German O.T.O., Heinrich Tränker. Tränker called the Hohenleuben Conference in Thuringia, Germany, which Crowley attended. There, prominent members like Karl Germer and Martha Küntzel championed Crowley’s leadership, but other key figures like Albin Grau, Oskar Hopfer, and Henri Birven backed Tränker by opposing it, resulting in a split in the O.T.O. Moving to Paris, where he broke with Olsen in 1926, Crowley went through a large number of lovers over the following years, with whom he experimented in sex magic. Throughout, he was dogged by poor health, largely caused by his heroin and cocaine addictions. In 1928, Crowley was introduced to young Englishman Israel Regardie, who embraced Thelema and became Crowley’s secretary for the next three years. That year, Crowley also met Gerald Yorke, who began organising Crowley’s finances but never became a Thelemite. He also befriended Thomas Driberg; Driberg did not accept Thelema either. It was here that Crowley also published one of his most significant works, Magick in Theory and Practice, which received little attention at the time. In December 1929 Crowley met the Nicaraguan Maria Teresa Sanchez. Crowley was deported from France by the authorities, who disliked his reputation and feared that he was a German agent. So that she could join him in Britain, Crowley married Sanchez in August 1929. Now based in London, Mandrake Press agreed to publish his autobiography in a limited edition six-volume set, also publishing his novel Moonchild and book of short stories The Stratagem. Mandrake went into liquidation in November 1930, before the entirety of Crowley’s Confessions could be published. Mandrake’s owner P.R. Stephenson meanwhile wrote The Legend of Aleister Crowley, an analysis of the media coverage surrounding him. Berlin and London: 1930–38 In April 1930, Crowley moved to Berlin, where he took Hanni Jaegar as his magical partner; the relationship was troubled. In September he went to Lisbon in Portugal to meet the poet Fernando Pessoa. There, he decided to fake his own death, doing so with Pessoa’s help at the Boca do Inferno rock formation. He then returned to Berlin, where he reappeared three weeks later at the opening of his art exhibition at the Gallery Neumann-Nierendorf. Crowley’s paintings fitted with the fashion for German Expressionism; few of them sold, but the press reports were largely favourable. In August 1931, he took Bertha Busch as his new lover; they had a violent relationship, and often physically assaulted one another. He continued to have affairs with both men and women while in the city, and met with famous people like Aldous Huxley and Alfred Adler. After befriending him, in January 1932 he took the communist Gerald Hamilton as a lodger, through whom he was introduced to many figures within the Berlin far left; it is possible that he was operating as a spy for British intelligence at this time, monitoring the communist movement. Crowley left Busch and returned to London, where he took Pearl Brooksmith as his new Scarlet Woman. Undergoing further nasal surgery, it was here in 1932 that he was invited to be guest of honour at Foyles’ Literary Luncheon, also being invited by Harry Price to speak at the National Laboratory of Psychical Research. In need of money, he launched a series of court cases against people whom he believed had libelled him, some of which proved successful. He gained much publicity for his lawsuit against Constable and Co for publishing Nina Hamnett’s Laughing Torso (1932)– a book he thought libelled him– but lost the case. The court case added to Crowley’s financial problems, and in February 1935 he was declared bankrupt. During the hearing, it was revealed that Crowley had been spending three times his income for several years. Crowley developed a platonic friendship with Deidre Patricia O’Doherty; she offered to bear his child, who was born in May 1937. Named Randall Gair, Crowley nicknamed him Aleister Atatürk. Crowley continued to socialise with friends, holding curry parties in which he cooked particularly spicy food for them. In 1936, he published his first book in six years, The Equinox of the Gods, which contained a facsimile of The Book of the Law and was considered to be volume III, number 3, of The Equinox periodical. The work sold well, resulting in a second print run. In 1937 he gave a series of public lectures on yoga in Soho. Crowley was now living largely off contributions supplied by the O.T.O.'s Agape Lodge in California, led by rocket scientist John Whiteside “Jack” Parsons. Crowley was intrigued by the rise of Nazism in Germany, and influenced by his friend Martha Küntzel believed that Adolf Hitler might convert to Thelema; when the Nazis abolished the German O.T.O. and imprisoned Germer, who fled to the US, Crowley then lambasted Hitler as a black magician. Second World War and death: 1939–47 When the Second World War broke out, Crowley wrote to the Naval Intelligence Division offering his services, but they declined. He associated with a variety of figures in Britain’s intelligence community at the time, including Dennis Wheatley, Roald Dahl, Ian Fleming, and Maxwell Knight, and claimed to have been behind the “V for Victory” sign first used by the BBC; this has never been proven. In 1940, his asthma worsened, and with his German-produced medication unavailable, he returned to using heroin, once again becoming addicted. As the Blitz hit London, Crowley relocated to Torquay, where he was briefly hospitalised with asthma, and entertained himself with visits to the local chess club. Tiring of Torquay, he returned to London, where he was visited by American Thelemite Grady McMurtry, to whom Crowley awarded the title of “Hymenaeus Alpha”. He stipulated that though Germer would be his immediate successor, McMurty should succeed Germer as head of the O.T.O. after the latter’s death. With O.T.O. initiate Lady Frieda Harris, Crowley developed plans to produce a tarot card set, designed by him and painted by Harris. Accompanying this was a book, published in a limited edition as The Book of Thoth by Chiswick Press in 1944. To aid the war effort, he wrote a proclamation on the rights of humanity, Liber Oz, and a poem for the liberation of France, Le Gauloise. Crowley’s final publication during his lifetime was a book of poetry, Olla: An Anthology of Sixty Years of Song. Another of his projects, Aleister Explains Everything, was posthumously published as Magick Without Tears. In April 1944 Crowley briefly moved to Aston Clinton in Buckinghamshire, where he was visited by the poet Nancy Cunard, before relocating to Hastings in Sussex, where he took up residence at the Netherwood boarding house. He took a young man named Kenneth Grant as his secretary, paying him in magical teaching rather than wages. He was also introduced to John Symonds, whom he appointed to be his literary executor; Symonds thought little of Crowley, later publishing negative biographies of him. Corresponding with the illusionist Arnold Crowther, it was through him that Crowley was introduced to Gerald Gardner, the future founder of Gardnerian Wicca. They became friends, with Crowley authorising Gardner to revive Britain’s ailing O.T.O. Another visitor was Eliza Marian Butler, who interviewed Crowley for her book The Myth of the Magus. Other friends and family also spent time with him, among them Doherty and Crowley’s son Aleister Atatürk. On 1 December 1947, Crowley died at Netherwood of chronic bronchitis aggravated by pleurisy and myocardial degeneration, aged 72. His funeral was held at a Brighton crematorium on 5 December; about a dozen people attended, and Louis Wilkinson read excerpts from the Gnostic Mass, The Book of the Law, and “Hymn to Pan”. The funeral generated press controversy, and was labelled a Black Mass by the tabloids. Crowley’s ashes were sent to Germer in the US, who buried them in his garden in Hampton, New Jersey. Beliefs and thought Crowley’s thought was not always cohesive, and was influenced by a variety of sources, ranging from eastern religious movements and practices like Hindu yoga and Buddhism, scientific naturalism, and various currents within Western esotericism, among them ceremonial magic, alchemy, astrology, Rosicrucianism, Kabbalah, and the Tarot. Philosopher John Moore opined that Crowley’s thought was rooted in Romanticism and the Decadent movement, an assessment shared by historian Alex Owen, who noted that Crowley adhered to the “modus operandi” of the decadent movement throughout his life. Crowley believed that the twentieth century marked humanity’s entry to the Aeon of Horus, a new era in which humans would take increasing control of their destiny. He believed that this Aeon follows on from the Aeon of Osiris, in which paternalistic religions like Christianity, Islam, and Buddhism dominated the world, and that this in turn had followed the Aeon of Isis, which had been maternalistic and dominated by goddess worship. Thelema revolves around the idea that human beings each have their own True Will that they should discover and pursue, and that this exists in harmony with the Cosmic Will that pervades the universe. The moral code of “Do What Thou Wilt” is believed by Thelemites to be the faith’s ethical law, although academic Marco Pasi noted that this was not anarchistic or libertarian in structure, as Crowley saw individuals as part of a wider societal organism. Crowley believed in the objective existence of magic, which he chose to spell “Magick”. In his book Magick in Theory and Practice, Crowley defined Magick as “the Science and Art of causing change to occur in conformity with Will”. He also told his disciple Karl Germer that “Magick is getting into communication with individuals who exist on a higher plane than ours. Mysticism is the raising of oneself to their level.” Crowley saw Magick as a third way between religion and science, giving The Equinox the subtitle of “The Method of Science; the Aim of Religion”. Both during his life and after it, Crowley has been widely described as a Satanist, usually by detractors. Crowley stated he did not consider himself a Satanist, nor did he worship Satan, as he did not accept the Christian world view in which Satan was believed to exist. He was also accused of advocating human sacrifice, largely because of a passage in Book 4 in which he stated that “A male child of perfect innocence and high intelligence is the most satisfactory victim”. This was intended as a veiled reference to male masturbation. Personal life Crowley biographer Martin Booth asserted that Crowley was “self-confident, brash, eccentric, egotistic, highly intelligent, arrogant, witty, wealthy, and, when it suited him, cruel”. Similarly, Richard Spence noted that Crowley was “capable of immense physical and emotional cruelty”. Biographer Lawrence Sutin noted that Crowley exhibited “courage, skill, dauntless energy, and remarkable focus of will” while at the same time showing a "blind arrogance, petty fits of bile, [and] contempt for the abilities of his fellow men". The Thelemite Lon Milo DuQuette noted that Crowley “was by no means perfect” and “often alienated those who loved him dearest.” Crowley enjoyed being outrageous and flouting conventional morality, with John Symonds noting that he “was in revolt against the moral and religious values of his time”. Crowley’s political thought was subjected to an in-depth study by academic Marco Pasi, who noted that for Crowley, socio-political concerns were subordinate to metaphysical and spiritual ones. Pasi argued that it was difficult to classify Crowley as being either on the political left or right, but he was perhaps best categorised as a “conservative revolutionary” despite not being affiliated with the German-based conservative revolutionary movement. Pasi noted that Crowley sympathised with extreme ideologies like Nazism and Marxism-Leninism, in that they wished to violently overturn society, and hoped that both Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union might adopt Thelema. Crowley described democracy as an “imbecile and nauseating cult of weakness”, and commented that The Book of the Law proclaimed that “there is the master and there is the slave; the noble and the serf; the 'lone wolf’ and the herd”. In this attitude he was influenced by the work of Friedrich Nietzsche and by Social Darwinism. Crowley also saw himself as an aristocrat, describing himself as Laird Boleskine; he had contempt for most of the British aristocracy, and once described his ideology as “aristocratic communism”. Crowley was bisexual, and exhibited a sexual preference for women. In particular he had an attraction toward “exotic women”, and claimed to have fallen in love on multiple occasions; Kaczynski stated that “when he loved, he did so with his whole being, but the passion was typically short-lived”. Even in later life, he was able to attract young bohemian women to be his lovers, largely due to his charisma. During same-sex anal intercourse, he usually played the passive role, which Booth believed “appealed to his masochistic side”. Crowley argued that gay and bisexual people should not suppress their sexual orientation, commenting that a person “must not be ashamed or afraid of being homosexual if he happens to be so at heart; he must not attempt to violate his own true nature because of public opinion, or medieval morality, or religious prejudice which would wish he were otherwise.” On other issues he adopted a more conservative attitude; he opposed abortion on moral grounds, believing that no woman following her True Will would ever desire one. Views on race and gender Biographer Lawrence Sutin stated that “blatant bigotry is a persistent minor element in Crowley’s writings”. Sutin thought Crowley “a spoiled scion of a wealthy Victorian family who embodied many of the worst John Bull racial and social prejudices of his upper-class contemporaries”, noting that he “embodied the contradiction that writhed within many Western intellectuals of the time: deeply held racist viewpoints courtesy of their culture, coupled with a fascination with people of colour”. Crowley insulted his close Jewish friend Victor Neuburg using anti-Semitic slurs, and he had mixed opinions about Jews as a group. Although he praised their “sublime” poetry and stated that their “imagination, romance, loyalty, probity and humanity”, he also thought that centuries of persecution had led some Jews to exhibit “avarice, servility, falseness, cunning and the rest”. He was also known to praise various ethnic and cultural groups, for instance he thought that the Chinese people exhibited a “spiritual superiority” to the English, and praised Muslims for exhibiting “manliness, straightforwardness, subtlety, and self-respect”. Crowley also exhibited a “general misogyny” that Booth believed arose from his bad relationship with his mother. Sutin noted that Crowley “largely accepted the notion, implicitly embodied in Victorian sexology, of women as secondary social beings in terms of intellect and sensibility”. Crowley described women as “moral inferiors” who had to be treated with “firmness, kindness and justice”. Legacy and influence Crowley has remained an influential figure, both amongst occultists and in popular culture, particularly that of Britain, but also of other parts of the world. In 2002, a BBC poll placed Crowley seventy-third in a list of the 100 Greatest Britons. Richard Cavendish has written of him that “In native talent, penetrating intelligence and determination, Aleister Crowley was the best-equipped magician to emerge since the seventeenth century.” Wouter Hanegraaff asserted that Crowley was an extreme representation of “the dark side of the occult”, while philosopher John Moore opined that Crowley stood out as a “Modern Master” when compared with other prominent occult figures like George Gurdjieff, P.D. Ouspensky, Rudolf Steiner, or Helena Blavatsky, also describing him as a “living embodiment” of Oswald Spengler’s “Faustian Man”. Biographer Tobias Churton considered Crowley “a pioneer of consciousness research”, and Sutin thought that he had made “distinctly original contributions” to the study of yoga in the West. Thelema continued to develop and spread following Crowley’s death. In 1969, the O.T.O. was reactivated in California under the leadership of Grady Louis McMurtry; in 1985 its right to the title was unsuccessfully challenged in court by a rival group, the Society Ordo Templi Orientis, led by Brazilian Thelemite Marcelo Ramos Motta. Another American Thelemite was the filmmaker Kenneth Anger, who had been influenced by Crowley’s writings from a young age. In the United Kingdom, Kenneth Grant propagated a tradition known as Typhonian Thelema through his organisation, the Typhonian O.T.O., later renamed the Typhonian Order. Also in Britain, an occultist known as Amado Crowley claimed to be Crowley’s son; this has been refuted by academic investigation. Amado argued that Thelema was a false religion created by Crowley to hide his true esoteric teachings, which Amado claimed to be propagating. Several Western esoteric traditions other than Thelema were also influenced by Crowley. Gerald Gardner, founder of Gardnerian Wicca, made use of much of Crowley’s published material when composing the Gardnerian ritual liturgy, and the Australian witch Rosaleen Norton was also heavily influenced by Crowley’s ideas. L. Ron Hubbard, the American founder of Scientology, was involved in Thelema in the early 1940s (with Jack Parsons), and it has been argued that Crowley’s ideas influenced some of Hubbard’s work. Two prominent figures in religious Satanism, Anton LaVey and Michael Aquino, were also influenced by Crowley’s work. Crowley also had a wider influence in British popular culture. He was included as one of the figures on the cover art of The Beatles’ album Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band (1967), and his motto of “Do What Thou Wilt” was inscribed on the vinyl of Led Zeppelin’s album Led Zeppelin III (1970). Led Zeppelin co-founder Jimmy Page bought Boleskine in 1971, and part of the band’s film The Song Remains the Same was filmed in the grounds. He sold it in 1992. David Bowie made reference to Crowley in the lyrics of his song “Quicksand” (1971), while Ozzy Osbourne and his lyricist Bob Daisley wrote a song titled “Mr Crowley” (1980). Bibliography References Wikipedia—https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aleister_Crowley

Leonard Norman Cohen (21 September 1934 – 10 November 2016) was a Canadian Juno Award-winning singer-songwriter, musician, poet, and novelist. His work often explores religion, isolation, sexuality, and personal relationships. Cohen has been inducted into the American Rock and Roll Hall of Fame and both the Canadian Music Hall of Fame and the Canadian Songwriters Hall of Fame. He is also a Companion of the Order of Canada, the nation's highest civilian honour. In 2011, Cohen received a Prince of Asturias Award for literature. Cohen's writing process, as he told an interviewer in 1998, is “like a bear stumbling into a beehive or a honey cache: I'm stumbling right into it and getting stuck, and it's delicious and it's horrible and I'm in it and it's not very graceful and it's very awkward and it's very painful and yet there's something inevitable about it”.

Padraic Colum (8 December 1881– 11 January 1972) was an Irish poet, novelist, dramatist, biographer, playwright, children’s author and collector of folklore. He was one of the leading figures of the Irish Literary Revival.

George Crabbe (/kræb/; 24 December 1754– 3 February 1832) was an English poet, surgeon, and clergyman. He is best known for his early use of the realistic narrative form and his descriptions of middle and working-class life and people. In the 1770s, Crabbe began his career as a doctor’s apprentice, later becoming a surgeon. In 1780, he travelled to London to make a living as a poet. After encountering serious financial difficulty and being unable to have his work published, he wrote to the statesman and author Edmund Burke for assistance. Burke was impressed enough by Crabbe’s poems to promise to help him in any way he could. The two became close friends and Burke helped Crabbe greatly both in his literary career and in building a role within the church. Burke introduced Crabbe to the literary and artistic society of London, including Sir Joshua Reynolds and Samuel Johnson, who read The Village before its publication and made some minor changes. Burke secured Crabbe the important position of Chaplain to the Duke of Rutland. Crabbe served as a clergyman in various capacities for the rest of his life, with Burke’s continued help in securing these positions. He developed friendships with many of the great literary men of his day, including Sir Walter Scott, whom he visited in Edinburgh, and William Wordsworth and some of his fellow Lake Poets, who frequently visited Crabbe as his guests. Lord Byron described him as “nature’s sternest painter, yet the best.” Crabbe’s poetry was predominantly in the form of heroic couplets, and has been described as unsentimental in its depiction of provincial life and society. The modern critic Frank Whitehead wrote that “Crabbe, in his verse tales in particular, is an important–indeed, a major–poet whose work has been and still is seriously undervalued.” Crabbe’s works include The Village (1783), Poems (1807), The Borough (1810), and his poetry collections Tales (1812) and Tales of the Hall (1819). Biography Early life Crabbe was born in Aldeburgh, Suffolk, the eldest child of George Crabbe Sr. The elder George Crabbe had been a teacher at a village school in Orford, Suffolk, and later in Norton, near Loddon, Norfolk; he later became a tax collector for salt duties, a position that his own father had held. As a young man he married an older widow named Craddock, who became the mother of his six children: George, his brothers Robert, John, and William, his sister Mary, and another sister who died as an infant. George Jr. spent his first 25 years close to his birthplace. He showed an aptitude for books and learning at an early age. He was sent to school while still very young, and developed an interest in the stories and ballads that were popular among his neighbors. His father owned a few books, and used to read passages from John Milton and from various 18th-century poets to his family. He also subscribed to a country magazine called Martin’s Philosophical Magazine, giving the “poet’s corner” section to George. The senior Crabbe had interests in the local fishing industry, and owned a fishing boat; he had contemplated raising his son George to be a seaman, but soon found that the boy was unsuited to such a career. George’s father respected his son’s interest in literature, and George was sent first to a boarding-school at Bungay near his home, and a few years later to a more important school at Stowmarket, where he gained an understanding of mathematics and Latin, and a familiarity with the Latin classics. His early reading included the works of William Shakespeare, Alexander Pope, who had a great influence on George’s future works, Abraham Cowley, Sir Walter Raleigh and Edmund Spenser. He spent three years at Stowmarket before leaving school to find a physician to be apprenticed to, as medicine had been settled on as his future career. In 1768 he was apprenticed to a local doctor at Wickhambrook, near Bury St Edmunds. This doctor practiced medicine while also keeping a small farm, and George ended up doing more farm labour and errands than medical work. In 1771 he changed masters and moved to Woodbridge, where he remained until 1775. While at Woodbridge he joined a small club of young men who met at an inn for evening discussions. Through his contacts at Woodbridge he met his future wife, Sarah Elmy. Crabbe called her “Mira”, later referring to her by this name in some of his poems. During this time he began writing poetry. In 1772, a lady’s magazine offered a prize for the best poem on the subject of hope, which Crabbe won. The same magazine printed other short pieces of Crabbe’s throughout 1772. They were signed “G. C., Woodbridge,” and included some of his lyrics addressed to Mira. Other known verses written while he was at Woodbridge show that he made experiments in stanza form modeled on the works of earlier English poets, but only showed some slight imitative skill. 1775 to 1785 His first major work, a satirical poem of nearly 400 lines in Pope’s couplet form entitled Inebriety, was self-published in 1775. Crabbe later said of the poem, which received little or no attention at the time, “Pray let not this be seen... there is very little of it that I’m not heartily ashamed of.” By this time he had completed his medical training and had returned home to Aldeburgh. He had intended to go on to London to study at a hospital, but he was forced through low finances to work for some time as a local warehouseman. He eventually travelled to London in 1777 to practice medicine, returning home in financial difficulty after a year. Crabbe continued to practice as a surgeon after returning to Aldeburgh, but as his surgical skills remained deficient, he attracted only the poorest patients, and his fees were small and undependable. This hurt his chances of an early marriage, but Sarah stayed devoted to him. In late 1779 he decided to move to London and see if he could make it as a poet, or, if that failed, as a doctor. He moved to London in April 1780, where he had little success, and by the end of May he had been forced to pawn some of his possessions, including his surgical instruments. He composed a number of works but was refused publication. He wrote several letters seeking patronage, but these were also refused. In June Crabbe witnessed instances of mob violence during the Gordon Riots, and recorded them in his journal. He was able to publish a poem at this time entitled The Candidate, but it was badly received by critics. He continued to rack up debts that he had no way of paying, and his creditors pressed him. He later told Walter Scott and John Gibson Lockhart that “during many months when he was toiling in early life in London he hardly ever tasted butchermeat except on a Sunday, when he dined usually with a tradesman’s family, and thought their leg of mutton, baked in the pan, the perfection of luxury.” In early 1781 he wrote a letter to Edmund Burke asking for help, in which he included samples of his poetry. Burke was swayed by Crabbe’s letter and a subsequent meeting with him, giving him money to relieve his immediate wants, and assuring him that he would do all in his power to further Crabbe’s literary career. Among the samples that Crabbe had sent to Burke were pieces of his poems The Library and The Village. A short time after their first meeting Burke told his friend Sir Joshua Reynolds that Crabbe had “the mind and feelings of a gentleman.” Burke gave Crabbe the footing of a friend, admitting him to his family circle at Beaconsfield. There he was given an apartment, supplied with books, and made a member of the family. The time he spent with Burke and his family helped by enlarging his knowledge and ideas, and introducing him to many new and valuable friends including Charles James Fox and Samuel Johnson. He completed his unfinished poems and revised others with the help of Burke’s criticism. Burke helped him have his poem, The Library, published anonymously in June 1781, by a publisher that had previously refused some of his work. The Library was greeted with modest praise from critics, and slight public appreciation. Through their friendship, Burke discovered that Crabbe was more suited to be a clergyman than a surgeon. Crabbe had a good knowledge of Latin and an evident natural piety, and was well read in the scriptures. He was ordained to the curacy of his native town on 21 December 1781 through Burke’s recommendation. He returned to live in Aldeburgh with his sister and father, his mother having died in his absence. Crabbe was surprised to find that he was poorly treated by his fellow townsmen, who resented his rise in social class. With Burke’s help, Crabbe was able to leave Aldeburgh to become chaplain to the Duke of Rutland at Belvoir Castle in Leicestershire. This was an unusual move on Burke’s part, as this kind of preferment would usually have been given to a family member or personal friend of the Duke or through political interest. Crabbe’s experience as Chaplain at Belvoir was not altogether happy. He was treated with kindness by the Duke and Duchess, but his slightly unpolished manners and his position as a literary dependent made his relations with others in the Duke’s house difficult, especially the servants. However, the Duke and Duchess and many of their noble guests shared an interest in Crabbe’s literary talent and work. During his time there, his poem The Village was published in May 1783, achieving popularity with the public and critics. Samuel Johnson said of the poem in a letter to Reynolds “I have sent you back Mr. Crabbe’s poem, which I read with great delight. It is original, vigorous, and elegant.” Johnson’s friend and biographer James Boswell also praised The Village. It was said at the time of publication that Johnson had made extensive changes to the poem, but Boswell responded by saying that “the aid given by Johnson to the poem, as to The Traveller and Deserted Village of Goldsmith, were so small as by no means to impair the distinguished merit of the author.” Crabbe was able to keep up his friendships with Burke, Reynolds, and others during the Duke’s occasional visits to London. He visited the theatre, and was impressed with the actresses Sarah Siddons and Dorothea Jordan. Around this time it was decided that, as Chaplain to a noble family, Crabbe was in need of a college degree, and his name was entered on the boards of Trinity College, Cambridge, through the influence of Bishop Watson of Llandaff, so that Crabbe could obtain a degree without residence. This was in 1783, but almost immediately afterwards he received an LL.B. degree from the Archbishop of Canterbury. This degree allowed Crabbe to be given two small livings in Dorsetshire, Frome St Quintin and Evershot. This promotion does not seem to have interfered with Crabbe’s residence at Belvoir or in London; it is likely that curates were placed in these situations. On the strength of these preferments and a promise of future assistance from the Duke, Crabbe and Sarah Elmy were married in December 1783, in the parish church of Beccles, where Miss Elmy’s mother lived, and a few weeks later went to live together at Belvoir Castle. In 1784 the Duke of Rutland became Lord Lieutenant of Ireland. It was decided that Crabbe was not to be on the Duke’s staff in Ireland, though the two men parted as close friends. The young couple stayed on at Belvoir for nearly another eighteen months before Crabbe accepted a vacant curacy in the neighbourhood, that of Stathern in Leicestershire, where Crabbe and his wife moved in 1785. A child had been born to them at Belvoir, dying only hours after birth. During the following four years at Stathern they had three other children; two sons, George and John, in 1785 and 1787, and a daughter in 1789, who died in infancy. Crabbe later told his children that his four years at Stathern were the happiest of his life. 1785 to 1810 In October 1787 the Duke of Rutland died at the Vice-Regal Lodge in Dublin, after a short illness, at the early age of 35. Crabbe assisted at the funeral at Belvoir. The Duchess, anxious to have their former chaplain close by, was able to get Crabbe the two livings of Muston, Leicestershire, and Allington, Lincolnshire, in exchange for his old livings. Crabbe brought his family to Muston in February 1789. His connection with the two livings lasted for over 25 years, but during 13 of these years he was a non-resident. He stayed three years at Muston. Another son, Edmund, was born in 1790. In 1792, through the death of one of Sarah’s relations and soon after of her older sister, the Crabbe family came into possession of an estate in Parham, which removed all of their financial worries. Crabbe soon moved his family to this estate. Their son William was born the same year. Crabbe’s life at Parham was not happy. The former owner of the estate had been very popular for his hospitality, while Crabbe’s lifestyle was much more quiet and private. His solace here was the company of his friend Dudley Long North and his fellow Whigs who lived nearby. Crabbe soon sent his two sons George and John to school in Aldeburgh. After four years at Parham, the Crabbes moved to a home in Great Glemham, Suffolk, placed at his disposal by Dudley North. The family remained here for four or five years. In 1796 their third son, Edmund died at the age of six. This was a heavy blow to Sarah who began suffering from a nervous disorder from which she never recovered. Crabbe, a devoted husband, tended her with exemplary care until her death in 1813. Robert Southey, writing about Crabbe to his friend, Neville White, in 1808, said “It was not long before his wife became deranged, and when all this was told me by one who knew him well, five years ago, he was still almost confined in his own house, anxiously waiting upon this wife in her long and hopeless malady. A sad history! It is no wonder that he gives so melancholy a picture of human life.” During his time at Glemham, Crabbe composed several novels, none of which were published. After Glemham, Crabbe moved to the village of Rendham in Suffolk, where he stayed until 1805. His poem The Parish Register was all but completed while at Rendham, and The Borough was also begun. 1805 was the last year of Crabbe’s stay in Suffolk, and it was made memorable in literature by the appearance of the Lay of the Last Minstrel by Walter Scott. Crabbe first saw it in a bookseller’s shop in Ipswich, read it nearly through while standing at the counter, and pronounced that a new and great poet had appeared. In October 1805, Crabbe returned with his wife and two sons to the parsonage at Muston. He had been absent for nearly 13 years, of which four had been spent at Parham, five at Great Glemham, and four at Rendham. In September 1807, Crabbe published a new volume of poems. Included in this volume were The Library, The Newspaper, and The Village; the principal new poem was The Parish Register, to which were added Sir Eustace Grey and The Hall of Justice. The volume was dedicated to Henry Vassall-Fox, 3rd Baron Holland, nephew and sometime ward of Charles James Fox. An interval of 22 years had passed since Crabbe’s last appearance as an author, and he explained in the preface to this volume the reasons for this lapse as being his higher calling as a clergyman and his slow progress in poetical ability. This volume led to Crabbe’s general acceptance as an important poet. Four editions were issued during the following year and a half, the fourth appearing in March 1809. The reviews were unanimous in approval, headed by Francis Jeffrey in the Edinburgh Review. In 1809 Crabbe sent a copy of his poems in their fourth edition to Walter Scott, who acknowledged them in a friendly reply. Scott told Crabbe “how for more than twenty years he had desired the pleasure of a personal introduction to him, and how, as a lad of eighteen, he had met with selections from The Village and The Library in The Annual Register.” This exchange of letters led to a friendship that lasted for the rest of their lives, both authors dying in 1832. Crabbe’s favorite among Scott’s “Waverley” novels was The Heart of Midlothian. The success of The Parish Register in 1807 encouraged Crabbe to proceed with a far longer poem, which he had been working on for several years. The Borough was begun at Rendham in Suffolk in 1801, continued at Muston after his return in 1805, and finally completed during a long visit to Aldeburgh in the autumn of 1809. It was published in 1810. In spite of its defects, The Borough was an outright success. The poem appeared in February 1810, and went through six editions in the next six years. When he visited London a few years later and was received with general welcome in the literary world, he was very surprised. “In my own village,” he told James Smith, “they think nothing of me.” The three years following the publication of The Borough were especially lonely for him. He did have his two sons, George and John, with him; they had both passed through Cambridge, one at Trinity and the other at Caius, and were now clergymen themselves, each holding a curacy in the neighbourhood, enabling them to live under the parental roof, but Mrs. Crabbe’s health was now very poor, and Crabbe had no daughter or female relative at home to help him with her care. Later life Crabbe’s next volume of poetry, Tales was published in the summer of 1812. It received a warm welcome from the poet’s admirers, and was favorably reviewed by Jeffrey in the Edinburgh Review and is considered to be his masterpiece. In the summer of 1813, Mrs. Crabbe felt well enough to want to see London again, and the father and mother and two sons spent nearly three months in rooms in a hotel. Crabbe was able to visit Dudley North and some of his other old friends, and to visit and help the poor and distressed, remembering his own want and misery in the great city thirty years earlier. The family returned to Muston in September, and Mrs. Crabbe died at the end of October at the age of 63. Within days of his wife’s death Crabbe fell seriously ill, and was in danger of dying. He rallied, however, and returned to the duties of his parish. In 1814, he became Rector of Trowbridge in Wiltshire, a position given to him by the new Duke of Rutland. He remained at Trowbridge for the rest of his life. His two sons followed him, as soon as their existing engagements allowed them to leave Leicestershire. The younger, John, who married in 1816, became his father’s curate, and the elder, who married a year later, became curate at Pucklechurch, also nearby. Crabbe’s reputation as a poet continued to grow in these years. His growing reputation soon made him a welcome guest in many houses to which his position as vicar of Trowbridge might not have admitted him. Nearby was the poet William Lisle Bowles, who introduced Crabbe to the noble family at Bowood House, home of the Marquess of Lansdowne, who was always ready to welcome those distinguished in literature and the arts. It was at Bowood House that Crabbe first met the poet Samuel Rogers, who became a close friend and had an influence on Crabbe’s poetry. In 1817, on the recommendation of Rogers, Crabbe stayed in London from the middle of June to the end of July in order to enjoy the literary society of the capital. While there he met Thomas Campbell, and through him and Rogers was introduced to his future publisher John Murray. In June 1819, Crabbe published his collection Tales of the Hall. The last 13 years of Crabbe’s life were spent at Trowbridge, varied by occasional visits among his friends at Bath and the surrounding neighbourhood, and by yearly visits to his friend Samuel Hoare Jr in Hampstead. From here it was easy to visit his literary friends in London, while William Wordsworth, Southey, and others occasionally stayed with the family. Around 1820 Crabbe began suffering from frequent severe attacks of neuralgia, and this illness, together with his age, made him less and less able to travel to London. In the spring of 1822, Crabbe met Walter Scott for the first time in London, and promised to visit him in Scotland in the fall. He kept this promise during George IV’s visit to Edinburgh, in the course of which the King met Scott and the poet was given a wine glass from which the King had drunk. Scott returned from the meeting with the King to find Crabbe at his home. As John Gibson Lockhart related in his Life of Sir Walter Scott, Scott entered the room that had been set aside for Crabbe, wet and hurried, and embraced Crabbe with brotherly affection. The royal gift was forgotten—the ample skirt of the coat within which it had been packed, and which he had hitherto held cautiously in front of his person, slipped back to its more usual position—he sat down beside Crabbe, and the glass was crushed to atoms. His scream and gesture made his wife conclude that he had sat down on a pair of scissors, or the like: but very little harm had been done except the breaking of the glass. Later in 1822, Crabbe was invited to spend Christmas at Belvoir Castle, but was unable to make the trip because of the winter weather. While at home, he continued to write a large amount of poetry, leaving 21 manuscript volumes at his death. A selection from these formed the Posthumous Poems, published in 1834. Crabbe continued to visit at Hampstead throughout the 1820s, often meeting the writer Joanna Baillie and her sister Agnes. In the autumn of 1831, Crabbe visited the Hoares. He left them in November, expressing his pain and sadness at leaving in a letter, feeling that it might be the last time he saw them. He left Clifton in November, and went direct to his son George, at Pucklechurch. He was able to preach twice for his son, who congratulated him on the power of his voice, and other encouraging signs of strength. “I will venture a good sum, sir,” he said, “that you will be assisting me ten years hence.” “Ten weeks” was Crabbe’s answer, and the prediction was right almost to the day. After a short time at Pucklechurch, Crabbe returned to his home at Trowbridge. Early in January he reported continued drowsiness, which he felt was a sign of increasing weakness. Later in the month he was prostrated by a severe cold. Other complications arose, and it soon became apparent that he would not live much longer. He died on 3 February 1832, with his two sons and his faithful nurse by his side. Poetry Crabbe’s poetry was predominantly in the form of heroic couplets, and has been described as unsentimental in its depiction of provincial life and society. John Wilson wrote that “Crabbe is confessedly the most original and vivid painter of the vast varieties of common life that England has ever produced;” and that “In all the poetry of this extraordinary man, we see a constant display of the passions as they are excited and exacerbated by the customs, laws, and institutions of society.” The Cambridge History of English Literature saw Crabbe’s importance to be more in his influence than in his works themselves: “He gave the poetry of nature new worlds to conquer (rather than conquered them himself) by showing that the world of plain fact and common detail may be material for poetry”. Although Augustan literature played an important role in Crabbe’s life and poetical career, his body of work is unique and difficult to classify. His best works are an original achievement in a new realistic poetical form. The major factor in Crabbe’s evolving from the Augustan influence to his use of realistic narrative was the changing readership of the late 18th–early 19th century. In the mid-18th century, literature was confined to the aristocratic and highly educated class; with the rise of the middle class at the turn of the 19th century, which came with a growing number of provincial papers, the heightening in production of books in weekly installments, and the establishment of circulating libraries, the need for literature was spread throughout the middle class. Narrative poetry was not a generally accepted mode in Augustan literature, making the narrative form of Crabbe’s mature works an innovation. This was due to some extent to the rise in popularity of the novel in the late 18th–early 19th century. Another innovation is the attention that Crabbe pays to details, both in description and characterization. Augustan critics had espoused the view that minute details should be avoided in favor of generality. Crabbe also broke with Augustan tradition by not dealing with exalted and aristocratic characters, but rather choosing people from middle and working-class society. Poor characters like Crabbe’s often anthologized “Peter Grimes” from The Borough would have been completely unacceptable to Augustan critics. In this way, Crabbe created a new way of presenting life and society in poetry. Criticism Wordsworth predicted that Crabbe’s poetry would last “from its combined merits as truth and poetry fully as long as anything that has been expressed in verse since it first made its appearance”, though on another occasion, according to Henry Crabb Robinson, he “blamed Crabbe for his unpoetical mode of considering human nature and society.” This last opinion was also held by William Hazlitt, who complained that Crabbe’s characters “remind one of anatomical preservations; or may be said to bear the same relation to actual life that a stuffed cat in a glass-case does to the real one purring on the hearth.” Byron, besides what he said in English Bards and Scotch Reviewers, declared, in 1816, that he considered Crabbe and Coleridge “the first of these times in point of power and genius.” Byron had felt that English poetry had been steadily on the decline since the depreciation of Pope, and pointed to Crabbe as the last remaining hope of a degenerate age. Other admirers included Jane Austen, Alfred, Lord Tennyson and Sir Walter Scott, who used numerous quotes from Crabbe’s poems in his novels. During Scott’s final illness, Crabbe was the last writer he asked to have read to him. Lord Byron admired Crabbe’s poetry, and called him “nature’s sternest painter, yet the best”. According to critic Frank Whitehead, “Crabbe, in his verse tales in particular, is an important—indeed, a major—poet whose work has been and still is seriously undervalued.” His early poems, which were non-narrative essays in poetical form, gained him the approval of literary men like Samuel Johnson, followed by a period of 20 years in which he wrote much, destroying most of it, and published nothing. In 1807, he published his volume Poems which started off the new realistic narrative method that characterized his poetry for the rest of his career. Whitehead states that this narrative poetry, which occupies the bulk of Crabbe’s output, should be at the center of modern critical attention. Q. D. Leavis said of Crabbe: “He is (or ought to be—for who reads him?) a living classic.” His classic status was also supported by T. S. Eliot in an essay on the poetry of Samuel Johnson in which Eliot grouped Crabbe together favorably with Johnson, Pope, and several other poets. Eliot said that “to have the virtues of good prose is the first and minimum requirement of good poetry.” Critic Arthur Pollard believes that Crabbe definitely met this qualification. Critic William Caldwell Roscoe, answering William Hazlitt’s question of why Crabbe hadn’t in fact written prose rather than verse said “have you ever read Crabbe’s prose? Look at his letters, especially the later ones, look at the correct but lifeless expression of his dedications and prefaces—then look at his verse, and you will see how much he has exceeded 'the minimum requirement of good poetry’.” Critic F. L. Lucas summed up Crabbe’s qualities: "naïve, yet shrewd; straightforward, yet sardonic; blunt, yet tender; quiet, yet passionate; realistic, yet romantic." Crabbe, who is seen as a complicated poet, has been and often still is dismissed as too narrow in his interests and in his way of responding to them in his poetry. “At the same time as the critic is making such judgments, he is all too often aware that Crabbe, nonetheless, defies classification,” says Pollard. Pollard has attempted to examine the negative views of Crabbe and the reasons for limited readership since his lifetime: "Why did Crabbe’s 'realism’ and his discovery of what in effect was the short story in verse fail to appeal to the fiction-dominated Victorian age? Or is it that somehow psychological analysis and poetry are uneasy bedfellows? But then why did Browning succeed and Crabbe descend to the doldrums or to the coteries of admiring enthusiasts? And why have we in this century (the 20th century) failed to get much nearer to him? Does this mean that each succeeding generation must struggle to find his characteristic and essential worth? FitzGerald was only one of many among those who would make 'cullings from’ or 'readings in’ Crabbe. The implications of such selection are clearly that, though much has vanished, much deserves to remain.” Entomology Crabbe was known as a coleopterist and recorder of beetles, and is credited for discovering the first specimen of Calosoma sycophanta L. to be recorded from Suffolk. He published an essay on the Natural History of the Vale of Belvoir in John Nichols’s, Bibliotheca Topographia Britannica, VIII, Antiquities in Leicestershire, 1790. It includes a very extensive list of local coleopterans, and references more than 70 species. Bibliography * Inebriety (published 1775) * The Candidate (published 1780) * The Library (published 1781) * The Village (published 1782) * The Newspaper (published 1785) * Poems (published 1807) * The Borough (published 1810) * Tales in Verse (published 1812) * Tales of the Hall (published 1819) * Posthumous Tales (published 1834) Adaptations * Benjamin Britten’s opera Peter Grimes is based on The Borough. Britten also set an extract from The Borough as the third of his Five Flower Songs, op. 47. Charles Lamb’s verse play The Wife’s Trial; or, The Intruding Widow, written in 1827 and published the following year in Blackwood’s Magazine, was based on Crabbe’s tale “The Confidant”. References Wikipedia—https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/George_Crabbe

Christopher Pearse Cranch (March 8, 1813– January 20, 1892) was an American writer and artist, born in the District of Columbia. His conservative father, William Cranch, was Chief Judge of the United States Circuit Court of the District of Columbia, while his brother John was a painter. He graduated from Columbian College (now George Washington University) in 1835 before attending Harvard Divinity School and becoming a licensed preacher.

Dinah Maria Craik (born Dinah Maria Mulock, also often credited as Miss Mulock or Mrs. Craik) (20 April 1826– 12 October 1887) was an English novelist and poet born at Stoke-on-Trent to Dinah and Thomas Mulock and raised in Newcastle-under-Lyme, Staffordshire, where her father was then minister of a small congregation. Her childhood and early youth were much affected by his unsettled fortunes, but she obtained a good education from various quarters and felt called to be a writer. Mulock’s early success began with the novel Cola Monti (1849), and in the same year she produced her first three-volume novel, The Ogilvies, to great success.

Isabella Valancy Crawford (25 December 1846– 12 February 1887) was an Irish-born Canadian writer and poet. She was one of the first Canadians to make a living as a freelance writer. “Crawford is increasingly being viewed as Canada’s first major poet.” She is the author of “Malcolm’s Katie,” a poem that has achieved “a central place in the canon of nineteenth-century Canadian poetry.” Life Isabella Valancy Crawford was the last surviving daughter of Dr. Stephen Crawford. She was born in Dublin, Ireland on Christmas Day, 1846. The family emigrated to Canada when she was ten years of age. Much of Isabella Crawford’s early life is unknown. By her own account she was born in Dublin, Ireland, the sixth daughter of Dr. Stephen Dennis Crawford and Sydney Scott; but “No record has been found of that marriage or of the birthdates and birthplaces of at least six children, of whom Isabella wrote that she was the sixth.” The family was in Canada by 1857; in that year, Dr. Crawford applied for a license to practice medicine in Paisley, Canada West. “In a few years, disease had taken nine of the twelve children, and a small medical practice had reduced the family to semi-poverty.” Dr. Crawford served as Treasurer of Paisley Township, but "a scandal of a missing $500 in misappropriated Township funds and the subsequent suicide of one of his bondsmen" caused the family to leave Paisley in 1861. By chance Dr. Crawford met Richard Strickland of Lakefield. Strickland invited the Crawfords to live at his home, out of charity, and because Lakefield did not have a doctor. There the family became acquainted with Strickland’s sisters, writers Susanna Moodie and Catherine Parr Traill. Isabella Crawford reportedly began writing at that time. She was also thought to be a close companion of Mrs. Traill’s daughter, Katharine (Katie). In 1869 the family moved to Peterborough, and Crawford began to write and publish poems and stories. Her first published poem, “A Vesper Star”, appeared in The Toronto Mail on Christmas Eve, 1873. "When Dr. Crawford died, on 3 July 1875, the three women"– Isabella, her mother, and her sister Emma, all who were left in the household– “became dependent on Isabella’s literary earnings.” After Emma died of tuberculosis, "Isabella and her mother moved in 1876 to Toronto, which was the centre of the publishing world in Canada.” “Although Isabella had been writing while still living in Lakefield... and had published poems in Toronto newspapers and stories in American magazines while living in Peterborough, when she moved to Toronto she turned her attention in earnest to the business of writing.” “During this productive period she contributed numerous serialized novels and novellas to New York and Toronto publications,” “including the Mail, the Globe, the National, and the Evening Telegram. She also contributed ”a quantity of 'occasional’ verse to the Toronto papers... and articles for the Fireside Monthly. In 1886 she became the first local writer to have a novel, A little Bacchante, serialized in the Evening Globe. In her lifetime Crawford published only one book, Old Spookses’ Pass, Malcolm’s Katie and Other Poems in 1884. It was privately printed and sold poorly. Crawford paid for the printing of 1,000 copies, and presumably sent out many review copies; “there were notices in such London journals as the Spectator, the Graphic, the Leisure Hour, and the Saturday Review. These articles pointed to ‘versatility of talent,’ and to such qualities as ‘humour, vivacity, and range of power,’ which were impressive and promising despite her extravagance of incident and ‘untrained magniloquence.’” However, only 50 books sold. “Crawford was understandably disappointed and felt she had been neglected by 'the High Priests of Canadian Periodical Literature’” (Arcturus 84).” Crawford died on 12 February 1887 in Toronto. She was buried in Peterborough’s Little Lake Cemetery near the Otonabee River. She had died in poverty and for years her body lay in an unmarked grave. A fundraising campaign was begun in 1899, and on 2 November 1900, a six-foot Celtic Cross was raised above her grave, inscribed: "Isabella Valancy Crawford / Poet / By the Gift of God.” Writing Crawford was a prolific writer. “For the most part Crawford’s prose followed the fashion of the feuilleton of the day.” Her magazine writing “displays a skilful and energetic use of literary conventions made popular by Dickens, such as twins and doubles, mysterious childhood disappearances, stony-hearted fathers, sacrificial daughters, wills and lost inheritances, recognition scenes, and, to quote one of her titles, 'A kingly restitution’.” As a whole, though, it “was romantic-Gothic ‘formula fiction.’” It is her poetry that has endured. Just two years after her death, W.D. Lighthall included generous selections from her book in his groundbreaking 1889 anthology, Songs of the Great Dominion, bringing it to a wider audience. “In the 20th century critics have given the work increasing respect and appreciation." "Crawford’s Collected Poems were edited (Toronto 1905) by J.W. Garvin, with an introduction by Ethelwyn Wetherald," a popular Canadian poet. Wetherald called Crawford “purely a genius, not a craftswoman, and a genius who has patience enough to be an artist.” In his 1916 anthology, Canadian Poets, Garvin stated that Crawford was “one of the greatest of women poets.” Poet Katherine Hale, Garvin’s wife, published a volume on Isabella Valancy Crawford in the 1920s Makers of Canada series. All of this helped Crawford’s poetry become more widely known. . A "serious critical assessment began in the mid-1940s with A.J.M. Smith, Northrop Frye, and E.K. Brown, who called her ‘the only Canadian woman poet of real importance in the last century.’" "Recognition of Isabella Valancy Crawford’s extraordinary mythopoeic power, and her structural use of images, came... in James Reaney’s lecture 'Isabella Valancy Crawford’ in Our living tradition (series 3, 1959)." Then a “renewed interest in Crawford resulted in the publication of forgotten manuscripts and critical articles” in the 1970s. "A reprint of the collected poems in 1972, with an introduction by poet James Reaney, made Crawford’s work generally available; six of her short stories, edited by Penny Petrone, appeared in 1975; and in 1977 the Borealis Press published a book of fairy stories and a long unfinished poem, ‘Hugh and Ion.’.” Crawford wrote a wide variety of poems, ranging from the Walter Scott-like doggerel (pun intended) of “Love Me, Love My Dog”, to the eerie mysticism of “The Camp of Souls” to the eroticism of The Lily Bed. But it is mainly Crawford’s "long narrative poems [that] have received particular attention." “Old Spookses’ Pass” is a dialect poem, set in the Rocky Mountains, concerning a dream vision of a midnight cattle stampede towards a black abyss that is stilled by a whirling lariat; “The helot” makes use of the Spartans’ practice of intoxicating their helots to teach their own children not to drink, as the starting-point for a highly incantatory and hypnotic poem that ends in Bacchic possession and death; and “Gisli the Chieftain” fuses mythic elements, such as the Russian spring goddess Lada and the Icelandic Brynhild, into a narrative of love, betrayal, murder, and reconciliation. These poems follow a pattern of depicting the world as a battleground of opposites– light and dark, good and evil– reconciled by sacrificial love.” Malcolm’s Katie The bulk of critical attention has gone to “Malcolm’s Katie.” That poem is a long narrative in blank verse, dealing mainly with the love and trials of young Max and Katie in the 19th-century Canadian bush, but containing a second running narrative recounting the war between the North and South Winds (Winter and Summer personified as First Nations warriors), and also a collection of love songs in different stanza forms. Many of those lauding the poem have seen their own interests reflected in it. For instance, socialist Livesay gave a reading that made the poem sound like a manifesto of Utopian socialism: Crawford presents a new myth of great significance to Canadian literature: the Canadian frontier as creating ‘the conditions for a new Eden,’ not a golden age or a millennium, but ‘a harmonious community, here and now.’ Crawford’s social consciousness and concern for humanity’s future committed her, far ahead of her time and milieu, to write passionate pleas for brotherhood, pacifism, and the preservation of a green world. Her deeply felt belief in a just society wherein men and women would have equal status in a world free from war, class hatred, and racial prejudice dominates all her finest poetry.” Others have similarly seen their concerns reflected in the poem. “Malcolm’s Katie has been given a nationalistic reading by Robin Mathews, a feminist reading by Clara Thomas, a biographical reading by Dorothy Farmiloe and a Marxian reading by Kenneth Hughes, as well as various literary-historical readings by Dorothy Livesay, Elizabeth Waterston, John Ower, Robert Alan Burns and others.” Not just interpretations on the poem’s meaning, but evaluations of its worth, have varied widely. Its detractors have included poet Louis Dudek, who called Crawford “'a failed poet’ of 'hollow convention... counterfeit feeling... and fake idealism’”; and Roy Daniells, who in The Literary History of Canada (1965) called “Malcolm’s Katie” “a preposterously romantic love story on a Tennysonian model in which a wildly creaking plot finally delivers true love safe and triumphant.” Some of the poem’s supporters concede the Tennyson influence but point out that there is much more to it: “While appearing on the surface melodramatic and stereotyped, Crawford’s love story is compelling and powerful; what seems at first a conventional conflict between rival suitors for the hand of the heroine becomes a serious, even profound, account of philosophical, social and ideological confrontations.” “In ‘Malcolm’s Katie’ Crawford adapted to the setting of pioneer Canada the domestic idyll as she learned it from Tennyson. Striking and new, however, is Crawford’s location of Max and Katie’s conventional love story within a context of Native legends—Indian Summer and the battle of the North and South Winds.” This myth telling (however accurate it was as a portrayal of First Nations beliefs) is what many of its supporters see as giving the poem its power. For instance, writing about “Malcolm’s Katie, critic Northrop Frye pronounced Crawford ”the most remarkable mythopoeic imagination in Canadian poetry": the “framework’ of Isabella Crawford is that of an intelligent and industrious female songbird of the kind who filled so many anthologies in the last century. Yet the ”South Wind" passage from Malcolm’s Katie is only the most famous example of the most remarkable mythopoeic imagination in Canadian poetry. She puts her myth in an Indian form, which reminds us of the resemblance between white and Indian legendary heroes in the New World, between Paul Bunyan and Davy Crockett on the one hand and Glooscap on the other. The white myths are not necessarily imitated from the Indian ones, but they may have sprung from an unconscious feeling that the primitive myth expressed the imaginative impact of the country as more artificial literature could never do.” Frye believed, and thought Crawford’s “poetic sense” told her, “that the most obvious development in the romantic landscape is toward the mythological”; and he saw Crawford’s attempt at an indigenous Canadian myth as the intellectual equivalent of the simultaneous pioneer exploration and settlement: “In the long mythopoeic passage from Isabella Crawford’s Malcolm’s Katie, beginning ‘The South Wind laid his moccasins aside,’ we see how the poet is, first, taming the landscape imaginatively, as settlement tames it physically, by animating the lifeless scene with humanized figures, and, second, integrating the literary tradition of the country by deliberately re-establishing the broken cultural link with Indian civilization.” Hugh and Ion Dorothy Livesay, researching Crawford’s life for the Dictionary of Canadian Biography in 1977, discovered the manuscript of an uncompleted narrative poem in the Crawford fonds at Kingston, Ontario’s Queen’s University. Called Hugh and Ion, it deals with "Hugh and Ion, two friends who have fled the noxious city—probably contemporary Toronto—for purification in the primal wilderness [and] carry on a sustained dialogue, Hugh arguing for hope, light, and redemption and Ion pointing out despair, darkness, and intractable human perversity." Perhaps due to Crawford’s Toronto experiences, this last poem marked a significant change in her views, showing the city as “a demonic, urban world of isolation and blindness which has wilfully cut itself off from the regenerative power of the wildernese. The confident innocence and romantic idealism, which account for much of the inner fire of Malcolm’s Katie, have simply ceased to be operative.... Nowhere else in nineteenth-century Canadian literature, with the exception of Lampman’s ”the End of Things", is there another example of the creative imagination being brought to bear, in so Blakean a manner, on the nascent social evils of the ‘infant city.’” Recognition Isabella Valancy Crawford was designated a Person of National Historic Significance in 1947. A small garden park in downtown Toronto, at Front and John Streets (near the CN Tower), has been named Isabella Valancy Crawford Park.

Countee Cullen (1903 – January 9, 1946) was an American poet who was a leading figure in the Harlem Renaissance. Early life Countee Cullen was possibly born on May 30, although due to conflicting accounts of his early life, a general application of the year of his birth as 1903 is reasonable. He was either born in New York, Baltimore, or Lexington, Kentucky, with his widow being convinced he was born in Lexington. Cullen was possibly abandoned by his mother, and reared by a woman named Mrs. Porter, who was probably his paternal grandmother. Porter brought young Countee to Harlem when he was nine. She died in 1918. No known reliable information exists of his childhood until 1918 when he was taken in, or adopted, by Reverend and Mrs Frederick A. Cullen of Harlem, New York City. The Reverend was the local minister, and founder, of the Salem Methodist Episcopal Church. DeWitt Clinton High School At some point, Cullen entered the DeWitt Clinton High School in Manhattan. He excelled academically at the school while emphasizing his skills at poetry and in oratorical contest. At DeWitt, he was elected into the honor society, editor of the weekly newspaper, and elected vice-president of his graduating class. In January 1922, he graduated with honors in Latin, Greek, Mathematics, and French. New York University and Harvard University After graduating high school, he entered New York University (NYU). In 1923, he won second prize in the Witter Bynner undergraduate poetry contest, which was sponsored by the Poetry Society of America, with a poem entitled The Ballad of the Brown Girl. At about this time, some of his poetry was promulgated in the national periodicals Harper's, Crisis, Opportunity, The Bookman, and Poetry. The ensuing year he again placed second in the contest and finally winning it in 1925. Cullen competed in a poetry contest sponsored by Opportunity. and came in second with To One Who Say Me Nay, while losing to Langston Hughes's The Weary Blues. Sometime thereafter, Cullen graduated from NYU as one of eleven students selected to Phi Beta Kappa. Cullen entered Harvard in 1925, to pursue a masters in English, about the same time his first collection of poems, Color, was published. Written in a careful, traditional style, the work celebrated black beauty and deplored the effects of racism. The book included "Heritage" and "Incident", probably his most famous poems. "Yet Do I Marvel", about racial identity and injustice, showed the influence of the literary expression of William Wordsworth and William Blake, but its subject was far from the world of their Romantic sonnets. The poet accepts that there is God, and "God is good, well-meaning, kind", but he finds a contradiction of his own plight in a racist society: he is black and a poet. Cullen's Color was a landmark of the Harlem Renaissance. He graduated with a masters degree in 1926. Professional career This 1920s artistic movement produced the first large body of work in the United States written by African Americans. However, Cullen considered poetry raceless, although his 'The Black Christ' took a racial theme, lynching of a black youth for a crime he did not commit. Countee Cullen was very secretive about his life. His real mother did not contact him until he became famous in the 1920s. The movement was centered in the cosmopolitan community of Harlem, in New York City. During the 1920s, a fresh generation of writers emerged, although a few were Harlem-born. Other leading figures included Alain Locke (The New Negro, 1925), James Weldon Johnson (Black Manhattan, 1930), Claude McKay (Home to Harlem, 1928), Hughes (The Weary Blues, 1926), Zora Neale Hurston (Jonah's Gourd Vine, 1934), Wallace Thurman (Harlem: A Melodrama of Negro Life, 1929), Jean Toomer (Cane, 1923) and Arna Bontemps (Black Thunder, 1935). The movement was accelerated by grants and scholarships and supported by such white writers as Carl Van Vechten. He worked as assistant editor for Opportunity magazine, where his column, "The Dark Tower", increased his literary reputation. Cullen's poetry collections The Ballad of the Brown Girl (1927) and Copper Sun (1927) explored similar themes as Color, but they were not so well received. Cullen's Guggenheim Fellowship of 1928 enabled him to study and write abroad. He met Nina Yolande Du Bois, daughter of W.E.B. DuBois, the leading black intellectual. At that time Yolande was involved romantically with a popular band leader. Between the years 1928 and 1934, Cullen traveled back and forth between France and the United States. Cullen married Yolande DuBois in April 1928. The marriage was the social event of the decade, but the marriage did not fare well, and he divorced in 1930. It is rumored that Cullen was a homosexual, and his relationship with Harold Jackman was a significant factor in the divorce. Jackman was a teacher whom Van Vechten had used as a model in his novel Nigger Heaven (1926). By 1929 Cullen had published four volumes of poetry. The title poem of The Black Christ and Other Poems (1929) was criticized for the use of Christian religious imagery - Cullen compared the lynching of a black man to the crucification of Jesus. As well as writing books himself, Cullen promoted the work of other black writers. But by 1930 Cullen's reputation as a poet waned. In 1932 appeared his only novel, One Way to Heaven, a social comedy of lower-class blacks and the bourgeoisie in New York City. From 1934 until the end of his life, he taught English, French, and creative writing at Frederick Douglass Junior High School in New York City. During this period, he also wrote two works for young readers, The Lost Zoo (1940), poems about the animals who perished in the Flood, and My Lives and How I Lost Them, an autobiography of his cat. In the last years of his life, Cullen wrote mostly for the theatre. He worked with Arna Bontemps to adapt his 1931 novel, God Sends Sunday into St. Louis Woman (1946, publ. 1971) for the musical stage. Its score was composed by Harold Arlen and Johnny Mercer, both white. The Broadway musical, set in poor black neighborhood in St. Louis, was criticized by black intellectuals for creating a negative image of black Americans. Cullen also translated the Greek tragedy Medea by Euripides, which was published in 1935 as The Medea and Some Poems with a collection of sonnets and short lyrics. In 1940, Cullen married Ida Mae Robertson, whom he had known for ten years. Poetry * "I Have a Rendezvous With Life" (1920s, poem) * Color Harper & brothers, 1925; Ayer, 1993, ISBN 9780881431551 [includes the poems "Incident," "Near White," "Heritage," and others], illustrations by Charles Cullen * Copper Sun, Harper & brothers, 1927 * The Ballad of the Brown Girl Harper & Brothers, 1927, illustrations by Charles Cullen * The Black Christ and Other Poems, Harper & brothers, 1929, illustrations by Charles Cullen * Tableau (1925) * One way to heaven, Harper & brothers, 1932 * Any Human to Another (1934) * The Medea and Some Other Poems (1935) * The lost zoo, Harper & brothers, 1940, Illustrations by Charles Sebree * My lives and how I lost them, Harper & Brothers Publishers, 1942 * On These I Stand: An Anthology of the Best Poems of Countee Cullen, Harper & Brothers Publishers, 1947 * My Soul's High Song: The Collected Writings of Countee Cullen (1991) * Countee Cullen: Collected Poems, Library of America, 2011, ISBN 9781598530834 Prose * One Way to Heaven (1931) * The Lost Zoo (1940) * My Lives and How I Lost Them (1942) Drama St. Louis Woman (1946) References Wikipedia - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Countee_Cullen By Gerald Early Poet, anthologist, novelist, translator, children's writer, and playwright, Countee Cullen is something of a mysterious figure. He was born 30 March 1903, but it has been difficult for scholars to place exactly where he was born, with whom he spent the very earliest years of his childhood, and where he spent them. New York City and Baltimore have been given as birthplaces. Cullen himself, on his college transcript at New York University, lists Louisville, Kentucky, as his place of birth. A few years later, when he had achieved considerable literary fame during the era known as the New Negro or Harlem Renaissance, he was to assert that his birthplace was New York City, which he continued to claim for the rest of his life. Cullen’s second wife, Ida, and some of his closest friends, including Langston Hughes and Harold Jackman, said that Cullen was born in Louisville. As James Weldon Johnson wrote of Cullen in The Book of American Negro Poetry (rev. ed., 1931): "There is not much to say about these earlier years of Cullen--unless he himself should say it." And Cullen--revealing a temperament that was not exactly secretive but private, less a matter of modesty than a tendency toward being encoded and tactful--never in his life said anything more clarifying. Sometime before 1918, Cullen was adopted by the Reverend Frederick A. and Carolyn Belle (Mitchell) Cullen. It is impossible to state with certainty how old Cullen was when he was adopted or how long he knew the Cullens before he was adopted. Apparently he went by the name of Countee Porter until 1918. By 1921 he became Countee P. Cullen and eventually just Countee Cullen. According to Harold Jackman, Cullen's adoption was never "official." That is to say it was never consummated through proper state-agency channels. Indeed, it is difficult to know if Cullen was ever legally an orphan at any stage in his childhood. Frederick Cullen was a pioneer black activist minister. He established his Salem Methodist Episcopal Church in a storefront mission upon his arrival in New York City in 1902, and in 1924 moved the Church to the site of a former white church in Harlem where he could boast of a membership of more than twenty-five hundred. Countee Cullen himself stated in Caroling Dusk (1927) that he was "reared in the conservative atmosphere of a Methodist parsonage," and it is clear that his foster father was a particularly strong influence. The two men were very close, often traveling abroad together. But as Cullen evidences a decided unease in his poetry over his strong and conservative Christian training and the attraction of his pagan inclinations, his feelings about his father may have been somewhat ambivalent. On the one hand, Frederick Cullen was a puritanical Christian patriarch, and Cullen was never remotely that in his life. On the other hand, it has been suggested that Frederick Cullen was also something of an effeminate man. (He was dressed in girl's clothing by his poverty-stricken mother well beyond the acceptable boyhood age for such transvestism.) That Cullen was homosexual or of a decidedly ambiguous sexual nature may also be attributable to his foster father's contrary influence as both fire-breathing Christian and latent homosexual. Cullen was an outstanding student at DeWitt Clinton High School (1918-1921). He edited the school's newspaper, assisted in editing the literary magazine, Magpie, and began to write poetry that achieved notice. While in high school Cullen won his first contest, a citywide competition, with the poem "I Have a Rendezvous with Life," a nonracial poem inspired by Alan Seeger's "I Have a Rendezvous with Death." At New York University (1921-1925), he wrote most of the poems for his first three volumes: Color (1925), Copper Sun (1927), and The Ballad of the Brown Girl (1927). If any event signaled the coming of the Harlem Renaissance, it was the precocious success of this rather shy black boy who, more than any other black literary figure of his generation, was being touted and bred to become a major crossover literary figure. Here was a black man with considerable academic training who could, in effect, write "white" verse-ballads, sonnets, quatrains, and the like--much in the manner of Keats and the British Romantics, (albeit, on more than one occasion, tinged with racial concerns) with genuine skill and compelling power. He was certainly not the first Negro to attempt to write such verse but he was first to do so with such extensive education and with such a complete understanding of himself as a poet. Only two other black American poets before Cullen could be taken so seriously as self-consciously considered and proficient poets: Phillis Wheatley and Paul Laurence Dunbar. If the aim of the Harlem Renaissance was, in part, the reinvention of the native-born Negro as a being who can be assimilated while decidedly retaining something called "a racial self-consciousness," then Cullen fit the bill. If "I Have a Rendezvous with Life" was the opening salvo in the making of Culln's literary reputation, then the 1924 publication of "Shroud of Color" in H. L. Mencken's American Mercury confirmed the advent of the black boy wonder as one of the most exciting American poets on the scene. After graduating Phi Beta Kappa from NYU, Cullen earned a masters degree in English and French from Harvard (1925-1927). Between high school and his graduation from Harvard, Cullen was the most popular black poet and virtually the most popular black literary figure in America. One of Cullen's poems and his popular column in Opportunity inspired A’Leila Walker--heiress of Madame C. J. Walker's hair-care products fortune and owner of a salon where the black and white literati gathered in the late 1920s--to name her salon "The Dark Tower." Cullen won more major literary prizes than any other black writer of the 1920s: first prize in the Witter Bynner Poetry contest in 1925, Poetry magazine's John Reed Memorial Prize, the Amy Spingarn Award of the Crisis magazine, second prize in Opportunity magazine's first poetry contest, and second prize in the poetry contest of Palms. In addition, he was the second black to win a Guggenheim Fellowship. Cullen was also at the center of one of the major social events of the Harlem Renaissance: On 9 April 1928 he married Yolande Du Bois, only child of W E. B. Du Bois, in one of the most lavish weddings in black New York history. This wedding was to symbolize the union of the grand black intellectual patriarch and the new breed of younger Negroes who were responsible for much of the excitement of the Renaissance. It was an apt meshing of personalities as Cullen and Du Bois were both conservative by nature and ardent traditionalists. That the marriage turned out so disastrously and ended so quickly (they divorced in 1930) probably adversely affected Cullen, who remarried in 1940. In 1929, Cullen published The Black Christ and Other Poems to less than his accustomed glowing reviews. He was bitterly disappointed that The Black Christ, his longest and in many respects most complicated poem, was considered by most critics and reviewers to be his weakest and least distinguished. From the 1930s until his death, Cullen wrote a great deal less, partly hampered by his job as a French teacher at Frederick Douglass Junior High. (His most famous student was James Baldwin.) But he wrote noteworthy, even significant work in a number of genres. His novel One Way to Heaven, published in 1934, rates as one of the better black satires and is one of the three important fictional retrospectives of the Harlem Renaissance, the others being Wallace Thurman's Infants of the Spring and George S. Schuyler's Black No More. Cullen's The Medea is the first major translation of a classical work by a twentieth-century black American writer. Cullen's contributions to children's literature, The Lost Zoo and *Christopher Cat, are among the more clever and engaging books of children's verse, written at a time when there was not much published in this area by black writers. He also completed perhaps some of his best, certainly some of his more darkly complex, sonnets. He was also working on a musical with Arna Bontemps called St. Louis Woman (based on Bontemps's novel God Sends Sunday) at the time of his death from high blood pressure and uremic poisoning on 9 January 1946. For many years after his death, Cullen's reputation was eclipsed by that of other Harlem Renaissance writers, particularly Langston Hughes and Zora Neale Hurston, and his work had gone out of print. In the last few years, however, there has been a resurgence of interest in Cullen's life and work and his writings are being reissued. See: Blanche E. Ferguson, Countee Cullen and the Negor Renaissance, 1966. Margaret Perry, A Bio-Bibliography of Countee P. Cullen, 1903-1946, 1966. Arna Bontemps, ed., The Harlem Renaissance Remembered, 1972. Arthur P. Davis, From the Dark Tower: Afro-American Writers, 1900 to 1960, 1974. Alan R. Shucard, Countee Cullen, 1984. Gerald Early, ed., My Soul’s High Song: The Collected Writings of Countee Cullen, Voice of the Harlem Renaissance, 1991. From The Oxford Companion to African American Literature. Copyright © 1997 by Oxford University Press. Reference www.english.illinois.edu/maps/poets/a_f/cullen/life.htm By Clifton H. Johnson Cullen, Countee (30 May 1903?-9 Jan. 1946), poet and playwright, was the son of Elizabeth Thomas Lucas. The name of his father is not known. The place of his birth has been variously cited as Louisville, Kentucky, New York City, and Baltimore, Maryland. Although in later years Cullen claimed to have been born in New York City, it probably was Louisville, which he consistently named as his birthplace in his youth and which he wrote on his registration form for New York University. His mother died in Louisville in 1940. In 1916 Cullen was enrolled in Public School Number 27 in the Bronx, New York, under the name of Countee L. Porter, with no accent on the first "e." At that time he was living with Amanda Porter, who generally is assumed to have been his grandmother. Shortly after she died in October 1917, Countee went to live with the Reverend Frederick Asbury Cullen, pastor of Salem Methodist Episcopal Church in Harlem, and his wife, the former Carolyn Belle Mitchell. Countee was never formally adopted by the Cullens, but he later claimed them as his natural parents and in 1918 assumed the name Countée P. (Porter) Cullen. In 1925 he dropped the middle initial. Cullen was an outstanding student in every school he attended. He entered the respected, almost exclusively white, Dewitt Clinton High School for boys in Manhattan in 1918. He became a member of the Arista honor society, and in his senior year he received the Magpie Cup in recognition of his achievements. He served as vice president of the senior class and was associate editor of the 1921 Magpie, the school's literary magazine, and editor of the Clinton News. He won an oratorical contest sponsored by the film actor Douglas Fairbanks and served as treasurer of the Inter-High School Poetry Society and as chairperson of the Senior Publications Committee. His poetry appeared regularly in school publications and he received wider public recognition in 1921 when his poem, "I Have a Rendezvous with Life," won first prize in a citywide contest sponsored by the Empire Federation of Women's Clubs. At New York University, which Cullen attended on a New York State Regents scholarship, he was elected to Phi Beta Kappa in his junior year and received a bachelor's degree in 1925. His poems were published frequently in the school magazine, The Arch, of which he eventually became poetry editor. In 1926 he received a master's degree from Harvard University and won the Crisis magazine award in poetry. When Cullen's first collection of poetry, Color, was published in 1925 during his senior year at New York University, he had already achieved national fame. His poems had been published in Bookman, American Mercury, Harper's, Century, Nation, Poetry, Crisis, the Messenger, Palms, and Opportunity. He had won second prize in 1923 in the Witter Bynner Undergraduate Poetry Contest sponsored by the Poetry Society of America. He placed second in that contest again in 1924 but won first prize in 1925, when he also won the John Reed Memorial Prize awarded by Poetry magazine. Color received universal critical acclaim. Alain Locke wrote in Opportunity (Jan. 1926): "Ladies and Gentlemen! A genius! Posterity will laugh at us if we do not proclaim him now. COLOR transcends all of the limiting qualifications that might be brought forward if it were merely a work of talent." The volume contains epitaphs, only two of which could be considered racial; love poems; and poems on other traditional subjects. But the significant theme--as the title implies--was race, and it was the poems dealing with racial subjects that captured the attention of the critics. Cullen was praised for portraying the experience of African Americans in the vocabulary and poetic forms of the classical tradition but with a personal intimacy. His second volume of poetry, Copper Sun, published in 1927 also by Harper and Brothers (the publisher of all his books), won first prize in literature from the Harmon Foundation. There are fewer racial poems in this collection than in Color, however, they express an anger that was not so pronounced in the earlier volume. The majority of the poems in Copper Sun deal with life and love and other traditional themes of nineteenth-century poetry. Cullen edited the October 1926 special issue of Palms devoted to African-American poets, and he collected and edited Caroling Dusk in 1927, an anthology of poetry by African Americans. Cullen was by this time generally recognized by critics and the public as the leading literary figure of the Harlem Renaissance. Gerald Early in My Soul's High Song (1991), Cullen's collected writings, said, "He was, indeed, a boy wonder, a young handsome black Ariel ascending, a boyish, brown-skinned titan who, in the early and mid-twenties, embodied many of the hopes, aspirations, and maturing expressive possibilities of his people." Cullen said that he wanted to be known as a poet, not a "Negro poet." This did not affect his popularity, although some Harlem Renaissance writers, including Langston Hughes, interpreted this to mean that he wanted to deny his race, an interpretation endorsed by some later scholars. A reading of his poetry reveals this view to be unfounded. In fact his major poems, and most of those still being printed in anthologies, have racial themes. Cullen expounded his view in the Brooklyn Eagle (10 Feb. 1924): If I am going to be a poet at all, I am going to be POET and not NEGRO POET. This is what has hindered the development of artists among us. Their one note has been the concern with their race. That is all very well, none of us can get away from it. I cannot at times. You will see it in my verse. The consciousness of this is too poignant at times. I cannot escape it. But what I mean is this: I shall not write of negro subjects for the purpose of propaganda. That is not what a poet is concerned with. Of course, when the emotion rising out of the fact that I am a negro is strong, I express it. But that is another matter. From 1926 to 1928, Cullen was assistant editor to Charles S. Johnson of Opportunity (subtitled "A Journal of Negro Life") for which he also wrote a feature column, "The Dark Tower." On the one hand, in his reviews and commentaries, he called upon African-American writers to create a representative and respectable race literature, and on the other insisted that the African-American artist should not be bound by race or restricted to racial themes. The year 1928 was a watershed for Cullen. He received a Guggenheim Fellowship to study in Paris, the third volume of his poetry, The Ballad of a Brown Girl, was published, and, after a long courtship, he married Nina Yolande Du Bois. Her father, W. E. B. Du Bois, the exponent of the "Talented Tenth" concept, rejoiced at bringing the young genius into his family. The wedding, performed by Cullen's foster father, was the social event of the decade in Harlem. After a brief honeymoon in Philadelphia, Cullen left for Paris and was soon joined by his bride. The couple experienced difficulties from the beginning. Finally, after informing her father that Cullen had confessed that he was sexually attracted to men, Nina Yolande sued for divorce, which was obtained in Paris in 1930. Cullen continued to write and publish after 1928, but his works were no longer universally acclaimed. The Black Christ and Other Poems, completed under the Guggenheim Fellowship, was published in 1929 while he was abroad. His only novel, One Way to Heaven, was published in 1932, and The Medea and Some Poems in 1935. He wrote two books for juveniles, The Lost Zoo (1940) and My Lives and How I Lost Them (1942). His stage adaptation of One Way to Heaven was produced by several amateur and professional theater groups but remained one of his several unpublished plays. Critics gave these works mixed reviews at best. Cullen's reputation as a writer rests on his poetry. His novel is not an important work, and it received little attention from the critics. He rejected so-called jazz and free-style as inappropriate forms of poetic expression. He was a romantic lyric poet and a great admirer of John Keats and Edna St. Vincent Millay. While his arch traditionalism and lack of originality in style had been seen in Color as minor flaws, they came to be viewed as major deficiencies in his later works. Cullen's fall from grace with the critics had little effect on his popularity. He remained much in demand for lectures and readings by both white and black groups. In 1931 alone he read his poetry and lectured in various institutions in seventeen states and Canada. Some of his poems were set to music by Charles Marsh, Virgil Thomson, William Schuman, William Lawrence, Margaret Bonds, Clarence Cameron White, Emerson Whithorne, and Noel DaCosta. However, even though he continued to live with his foster father, royalties and lecture fees were insufficient income for subsistence. He searched for academic positions and was offered professorships at Sam Huston College (named for an Iowa farmer, not the Texas senator), Dillard University, Fisk University, Tougaloo College, and West Virginia State College. There is no clear explanation of why he did not accept any of the positions. In 1932 he became a substitute teacher in New York public schools and became a full-time teacher of English and French at Frederick Douglass Junior High School in 1934, a position he held until his death (caused by complications of high blood pressure) in New York City, and where he taught and inspired the future novelist and essayist James Baldwin. Cullen married Ida Mae Roberson in 1940, and they apparently enjoyed a happy married life. Cullen's chief creative interest during the last year of his life was in writing the script for St. Louis Woman, a musical based on Arna Bontemps's novel God Sends Sunday. With music by Harold Arlen and lyrics by Johnny Mercer, St. Louis Woman opened on Broadway on 30 March 1946. Although the production was opposed by Walter White of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People and some other civil rights activists as an unfavorable representation of African Americans, it ran for four months and was revived several times by amateurs and one professional group between 1959 and 1980. On These I Stand, a collection of poems that Cullen had selected as his best, was published posthumously in 1947. The 135th Street Branch of the New York Public Library was named for Cullen in 1951, and a public school in New York City and one in Chicago also bear his name. For a few brief years Cullen was the most celebrated African-American writer in the nation and by many accounts is considered one of the major voices of the Harlem Renaissance. Source: http://www.anb.org/articles/16/16-00391.html; American National Biography Online Feb. 2000. Access Date: Wed Mar 21 11:27:39 2001 Copyright (c) 2000 American Council of Learned Societies. Published by Oxford University Press. All rights reserved. Reference www.english.illinois.edu/maps/poets/a_f/cullen/life.htm

Harry Crosby (June 4, 1898– December 10, 1929) was an American heir, bon vivant, poet, and publisher who for some epitomized the Lost Generation in American literature. He was the son of one of the richest banking families in New England, a Boston Brahmin, and the nephew of Jane Norton Grew, the wife of financier J. P. Morgan, Jr.. As such, he was heir to a portion of a substantial family fortune. He was a volunteer in the American Field Service during World War I, and later served in the U.S. Ambulance Corps. He narrowly escaped with his life. Profoundly affected by his experience in World War I, Crosby vowed to live life on his own terms and abandoned all pretense of living the expected life of a privileged Bostonian. He had his father’s eye for women, and in 1920 met Mrs. Richard Peabody (née Mary Phelps Jacob), six years his senior. They had sex within two weeks, and their open affair was the source of scandal and gossip among blue-blood Boston. Mary (or Polly as she was called) divorced her alcoholic husband and to her family’s dismay married Crosby. Two days later they left for Europe, where they devoted themselves to art and poetry. Both enjoyed a decadent lifestyle, drinking, smoking opium regularly, traveling frequently, and having an open marriage. Crosby maintained a coterie of young ladies that he frequently bedded, and wrote and published poetry that dwelled on the symbolism of the sun and explored themes of death and suicide. Crosby’s life in Paris was at the crossroads of early 20th century Paris literary and cultural life. He numbered among his friends some of the most famous individuals of the early 20th century, including Salvador Dalí, Ernest Hemingway, and Henri Cartier-Bresson. In 1927 Polly took the name Caresse, and she and Crosby founded the Black Sun Press. It was the first to publish works by a number of struggling authors who later became famous, including James Joyce, Kay Boyle, Ernest Hemingway, Hart Crane, D. H. Lawrence, René Crevel, T. S. Eliot, and Ezra Pound. Crosby died scandalously at age 31 as part of a murder–suicide or suicide pact. Early life Harry Crosby (born Henry Sturgis Crosby—his parents Stephen Van Rensslaer Crosby and Henrietta Marion Grew later changed his middle name to “Grew”) was born in Boston’s exclusive Back Bay neighborhood. He was the product of generations of blue-blood Americans, descended from the Van Rensselaers, Morgans, and Grews. His uncle was J. Pierpont Morgan, one of the richest men in America at that time. His father’s mother was the great-granddaughter of Alexander Hamilton. Also among Harry’s ancestors were Revolutionary War General Philip Schuyler and William Floyd, a signer of the Declaration of Independence. He had one sibling, a sister, Katherine Schuyler Crosby, nicknamed Kitsa, who was born in 1901. They moved shortly after his birth to an estate that had, among other things, a dance floor that could accommodate 150 people. His parents instilled in him a love for poetry. He would toss water bombs off the upper stories of the house onto unsuspecting guests. The family spent its summers on the North Shore of Massachusetts at a second home in Manchester, about 25 miles (40 km) from Boston. His religious, affectionate mother loved nature and was one of the founders of the Garden Club of America. His father, a banker, relived his days as a college football star through his Ivy League and Boston society connections. As a child, he attended the exclusive Noble and Greenough School. In 1913, when he was 14 years old, his parents decided it was time to send him to Boston’s foremost prep school, St. Mark’s School, which he graduated from in 1917. World War I At age 19, like many young men of upper-crust American society, Crosby volunteered to serve in the American Ambulance Service in France. A number of writers whose works he would later publish also served in the ambulance corps, including Ernest Hemingway and Malcolm Cowley. He arrived in France on July 7, 1917. When America officially entered the War, the American Ambulance Service corp was integrated into the U. S. Army Ambulance Corps and Crosby enlisted. During the Battle of Verdun he was very close to the front, and ferried wounded soldiers from the front lines to rear areas for three days without relief. On November 22, 1917, as Crosby and his best friend, Way “Spud” Spaulding, and another friend, Ben Weeden, were transporting several wounded soldiers to a medical aid station, Crosby’s Ambulance 741 was hit by an artillery shell that landed 10 feet (3.0 m) away, sending shrapnel ripping through the vehicle, completely destroying it. Miraculously, Crosby was unhurt, but Spaulding, following close behind in another ambulance, was struck in the chest by shrapnel. Crosby and Weeden were able to transport him to a hospital. After leaving Spaulding at the hospital in Beaulieu and returning to the aid station, Crosby was seen running in circles, lap after lap, without apparent purpose. Crosby declared later that that was the night he changed from a boy to a man. From that moment on he never feared death. Spaulding was in intensive care for three months and was released from the hospital after six months. Crosby wrote many letters home during the two years he was in France. Originally convinced that God had “ordained the war” to cleanse the world, his early reports home were good-spirited. Over time, however, he began to describe with an obsessive, perverse delight the horror of trench warfare and awful scenes of dead and dying soldiers. I saw the most gruesome sight I’ve ever seen. Lying on a blood stained brancard was a man—not older than twenty I afterwards ascertained—suffering the agonies of hell. His whole right cheek was completely shot away so you could see all the insides of his face. He had no jaws, teeth, or lips left. His nose was plastered in. Blood was streaming all over. Under his eyes the skin was just dead blue.... It took us an hour driving between two or three miles per hour to get him to his destination. Of course he couldn’t yell as his mouth or what was left of it was a mere mass of pulp. For a while I was afraid our ambulance was to be turned into a hearse, but he was still alive when we got him there. Of course in typical French fashion the doctors held their usual debate of questioning whether it was the right hospital or where his papers were. On August 23–25, 1918, during a battle near Orme, his section (Section Sanitaire 641, attached to the 120th French Division) evacuated more than 2000 wounded and was cited for bravery in the field while under heavy German bombardment. Crosby became in 1919 one of the youngest Americans to be awarded the Croix de guerre. Harry was happy to finally have a medal to prove his valor and wrote home, “Oh Boy!!!!!! won THE CROIX DE GUERRE. Thank God.” When the Armistice was signed, Crosby, like every other soldier, was anxious to go home, but waited for more than a month for orders. He wrote his mother, asking her to get “Uncle Jack” J.P. Morgan to intervene on his behalf. During the war, J.P. Morgan & Company had loaned $1.5 billion dollars (about $20.67 billion in today’s dollars) to the Allies to fight against the Germans. On March 21, 1919, Crosby left Brest for Boston via Philadelphia and arrived home a hero. Attends Harvard After returning from World War I, Crosby attended Harvard in the spring of 1919 under an accelerated program for veterans. He took 19 courses, six in French (which he read and spoke fluently) and six in English literature. The remainder of his courses were in fine arts, music, Spanish, and social ethics. Taking his studies very lightly, he thought he was going to fail, and paid a knowledgeable man who was familiar with what questions would be asked on the exams to tutor him. He graduated with a BA in 1921. But he yearned to escape the rigidity of everyday life in Boston. His experience in France made it unbearable to live among what he called “dreary, drearier, dreariest Boston” and to put up with “Boston virgins who are brought up among sexless surroundings, who wear canvas drawers and flat-heeled shoes.” He wanted to escape “the horrors of Boston and particularly of Boston virgins.” Any sense of propriety was wiped out by a lust for living in the moment, forgetting all risks and possible consequences. Meets Mrs. Richard Peabody Crosby’s mother invited Mrs. Richard Rogers Peabody (née Mary Phelps Jacob) to chaperone Crosby and some of his friends at a picnic on July 4, 1920, including dinner and a trip to the amusement park at Nantasket Beach. During dinner, Crosby never spoke to the girl on his left, breaking decorum. By some accounts, Crosby fell in love with the buxom Mrs. Peabody in about two hours, confessing his love for her in the Tunnel of Love at the amusement park. Two weeks later they went to church together in Manchester-by-the-Sea and spent the night together. Their public relationship was a scandal among blue-blood Boston. She was 28, six years older than Crosby, with two small children, and married. No matter what Crosby tried, Polly would not divorce Richard and marry him. Crosby took a job in Boston at the Shawmut National Bank, a job he disliked, and took the train to visit Polly in New York. In May 1921, when Polly would not respond to his demands, Crosby threatened suicide if Polly did not marry him. Polly’s husband Richard Peabody was in and out of sanitariums several times fighting alcoholism. In June 1921, she formally separated from him. Later that winter, Polly accepted weekend visits from Crosby, who would take the midnight train home to Boston afterward. In December, Polly’s husband Richard offered to divorce her, and in February 1922, their marriage was legally ended. After eight months at the Shawmut National Bank, Crosby got drunk for six days and resigned on March 14, 1922. Polly intervened with Crosby’s uncle, J. P. Morgan, Jr., who agreed to provide a position for Crosby in Paris at Morgan, Harjes et Cie. Crosby already spoke and read fluent French and moved to Paris in May. Polly preceded him there, but when Harry had ongoing trysts with other women, she returned to the United States in July, angry and jealous. On September 2, 1922, Crosby proposed to Polly via transatlantic cable, and the next day bribed his way aboard the Aquitania for New York which made a weekly six-day express run to New York. Polly and Harry marry On September 9, 1922, Crosby and Polly were married in the Municipal Building in New York City, and two days later they re-boarded the RMS Aquitania and moved with her children to Paris, France. There they joined the Lost Generation of expatriate Americans disillusioned by the loss of life in World War I and the moral and social values of their parents’ generation. Crosby continued his work at Morgan, Harjes et Cie, the Morgan family’s bank in Paris. They found an apartment at 12, Quai d’Orléans overlooking the Seine, on the exclusive Île Saint-Louis, and Polly would don her red bathing suit and row Crosby down the Seine in his dark business suit, formal hat, umbrella and briefcase to the Place de la Concorde where he would walk the last few blocks to the bank on Place Vendôme. As she rowed back home, Polly, who was well endowed, would enjoy whistles, jeers and waves from workmen. She said the exercise was good for her breasts. Crosby barely tolerated Polly’s children. After their first year in Paris, her eight-year-old son Billy was shipped off to Le Rosay, an elite boarding school in Gstaad. At the end of 1923, Crosby quit Morgan, Harjes et Cie and devoted himself to the life of a poet, and later, publisher. Polly would attempt to create a family Christmas each year, if only in a hotel, but Crosby regularly boycotted these events, making it clear that he would be looking for flirtations instead. Life as expatriates Both of them were attracted to the bohemian lifestyle of the artists gathering in Montparnasse. Even by the wild standards of Paris in the 1920s, Crosby was in a league of his own. The couple lived a hedonistic and decadent life, including an open marriage and numerous affairs. Crosby was a gambler and a womanizer; he drank “oceans of champagne” and used opium, cocaine, and hashish. They wrote a mutual suicide pact, and carried cremation instructions with them. Polly and Crosby purchased their first race horse in June 1924, and then two more in April 1925. At the end of 1924, Crosby persuaded Polly to formally change her first name to Caresse, as he felt Polly was too prim and proper for his wife. They briefly considered Clytoris before deciding on Caresse. Crosby suggesting that her new name “begin with a C to go with Crosby and it must form a cross with mine.” The two names intersected at right angles at the common “R,” “the Crosby cross.” In 1924, they rented an apartment in the Faubourg St. Germain for six months from Princess Marthe Bibesco, a friend of Crosby’s cousin Walter Berry, for fifty thousand francs (the equivalent of $2,200, about $30,377 in today’s dollars). When they moved in, they brought with them “two maids and a cook, a governess, and a chauffeur.” His inheritance, multiplied by the favorable exchange rate the American dollar enjoyed in postwar Europe, allowed them to indulge in an extravagant expatriate lifestyle. Crosby’s trust fund provided them with US$12,000 a year (or $165,372 in today’s dollars). Still, Crosby repeatedly overdrew his account at State Street Trust in Boston and at Morgan, Harjes, in Paris, which in blue-blood Boston was like writing graffiti on the front door of a church. During 1929, Crosby wired his sensible, reserved father, an investment banker, several times asking him to put more money from his inheritance into his account. In January, he asked his father to sell $4,000 ($55,124 today) worth “to make up for past extravagances in New York” In May, he noted in his diary that he had sold another $4,000 worth of stock “to enjoy life when you can”. In mid-July, drunk on sherry cobblers, he sent a cable to his father, who was not pleased by it: PLEASE SELL $10,000 WORTH OF STOCK. WE HAVE DECIDED TO LIVE A MAD AND EXTRAVAGANT LIFE His father complied but not without rebuking his son for his spendthrift ways. Lifestyle The couple became known for hosting small dinner parties from their giant bed in their palatial townhouse on Île Saint-Louis, and afterward everyone was invited to enjoy their huge bathtub together, taking advantage of iced bottles of champagne near at hand. They took extended traveling tours. In January 1925 they traveled to North Africa where they first smoked opium, a habit to which they would return again and again. Crosby had tattoos on the soles of his feet—a cross on one and a pagan sun symbol on the other. On November 19, 1925, Crosby and Polly rented a fashionable apartment on 19, Rue de Lille which they remained in for the rest of their time in Paris. Crosby developed an obsessive fascination with imagery centering on the sun. His poetry and journals often focused on the sun, a symbol to him of perfection, enthusiasm, freedom, heat, and destruction. Crosby claimed to be a “sun worshiper in love with death.” He often added a doodle of a “black sun” to his signature which also included an arrow, jutting upward from the “y” in Crosby’s last name and aiming toward the center of the sun’s circle: “a phallic thrust received by a welcoming erogenous zone.” Crosby met Ernest Hemingway on a skiing trip to Gstaad in 1926. In July 1927 Crosby and Hemingway visited Pamplona for the running of the bulls. Crosby wrote of Hemingway that “H. could drink us under the table.” Harry and Caresse published the Paris edition of Hemingway’s The Torrents of Spring. In early 1928 they traveled to the Middle East, visiting a number of countries. In late 1928 they secured a 20-year lease on a medieval mill outside of Paris in Ermenonville, France, for living quarters, which they named “Le Moulin du Soleil” ("The Mill of the Sun"). It had three old stone buildings, no electricity or telephone, and a single bathroom. The Crosbys added a racing course on which to play donkey polo and a small swimming pool. The millstream had slowed to a trickle. Inside the mill, Caresse converted the old washrooms and cellars into a large kitchen. The ground floor of the central mill tower served as a dining room, where guests sat on logs cut from the neighboring woods. The mill also contained a solid brass marine cannon that was rolled out for special guests, who were announced with a loud report. A whitewashed wall near the stairway served as a guest book. It was signed by many guests who included D. H. Lawrence, Douglas Fairbanks, the future George VI, and Eva Braun, Adolf Hitler’s future wife. They hosted wild parties at the mill, including drunken polo on donkeys, and entertained famous guests like Salvador Dalí. Henry wrote in his journal: Mobs for luncheon—poets and painters and pederasts and divorcées and Christ knows who and there was a great signing of names on the wall at the foot of the stairs and a firing off of the cannon and bottle after bottle of red wine and Kay Boyle made fun of Hart Crane and he was angry and flung The American Caravan into the fire because it contained a story of Kay Boyle’s (he forgot it had a poem of his in it) and there was a tempest of drinking and polo harra burra on the donkeys. and [sic] an uproar and a confusion so that it was difficult to do my work. Crosby would spend hours sunbathing naked atop the mill’s turret. Contrary to fashion of the day, he would not wear a hat. He often wore a black carnation in his lapel, and was known to color his finger– and toenails. Crosby once hired four horse-drawn carriages and raced them through the Paris streets. He would frequently drop in at Drosso where he would smoke opium. He would stay away from home for days. Crosby experimented with photography and saw the medium as a viable art form before it was widely accepted as such. In 1929, he met Henri Cartier-Bresson in Le Bourget, where Cartier-Bresson’s air squadron commandant had placed him under house arrest for hunting without a license. Crosby persuaded the officer to release Cartier-Bresson into his custody for a few days. The two men had an interest in photography, and Henry presented Henri with his first camera. They spent their time together taking and printing pictures at Crosby’s home, Le Moulin du Soleil. Cartier-Bresson was attracted to Caresse and began a sexual relationship with her that lasted until 1931, two years after Harry’s suicide. Crosby also learned to fly solo in November, 1929 when the aeroplane was so new that its spelling had not been agreed upon. Extra-marital relationships In 1923, shortly after their arrival in Paris, Caresse introduced Crosby to her friend Constance Coolidge, also a Boston Brahmin, an American expatriate. She was the niece of Frank Crowninshield, editor of Vanity Fair, and had been married to American diplomat Ray Atherton. Constance didn’t care what others thought about her. She loved anything risky and was addicted to gambling. Crosby nicknamed her the “Lady of the Golden Horse.” Crosby immediately began a sexual relationship with her that continued for several months. Harry rationalized their affair, telling Constance, “One should follow every instinct no matter where it leads.” In the fall of 1923, Caresse could not put up with their affair any longer and left for London. Harry told Constance the Caresse he could not meet Caresses’ demand that he “love her more than anyone in the world. This is absolutely impossible.” But Crosby would not leave Caresse, nor did Constance ask this of him. But when Constance received a letter from Caresse who confessed that her affair with her husband had made her “very miserable”, Constance wrote Harry and told him she would not see him any more. Harry was devastated by her decision. "Your letter was bar none the worst blow I have ever received. [...] I wouldn’t leave her under any circumstances nor as you say would you ever marry me." But the three remained friends, and on October 1, 1924 Constance married the Count Pierre de Jumilhac, although the marriage only lasted 5 years. In Morocco during one of their trips to North Africa, Crosby and Caresse took a 13-year-old dancing girl named Zora to bed with them. His seductive abilities became legendary in some social circles in Paris, and he engaged in a series of ongoing affairs, maintaining relationships with a variety of beautiful and doting young women. In July 1925, he met a fourteen-year-old girl named “Nubile.” He slept with a 13-year-old Berber girl in North Africa and a young Arab boy in Jerusalem. His wildness was in full flower during the drunken orgies of the annual Four Arts Balls (Bal des Quatz’ Arts). In July 1927, he turned 10 live snakes loose on the dance floor. He wrote in his diary about it later: I remember two strong young men stark naked wrestling on the floor for the honor of dancing with a young girl... and I remember a mad student drinking champagne out of a skull which he had pilfered front my Library as I had pilfered it a year ago from the Catacombs... and in a corner I watched two savages making love... and beside me sitting on the floor a plump woman with bare breasts absorbed in the passion of giving milk to one of the snakes! One year, Caresse showed up topless riding a baby elephant and wearing a turquoise wig. The motif for the ball that year was Inca, and Crosby dressed for the occasion, covering himself in red ocher and wearing nothing but a loincloth and a necklace of dead pigeons. Embracing the open sexuality offered by Crosby and his wife Caresse, Henri Cartier-Bresson fell into an intense sexual relationship with her that lasted until 1931. Black Sun Press In April, 1927, they founded an English language publishing company, first called Éditions Narcisse, after their black whippet, Narcisse Noir. They used the press as an avenue to publish their own poetry in small editions of finely made, hard-bound volumes. They printed limited quantities of meticulously produced, hand-manufactured books, printed on high-quality paper. Publishing in Paris during the 1920s and 1930s put the company at the crossroads of many American writers who were living abroad. In 1928, as Éditions Narcisse, they printed a limited edition of 300 numbered copies of “The Fall of the House of Usher” by Edgar Allan Poe with illustrations by Alastair. In 1928, they found they enjoyed the reception their initial works received, and decided to expand the press to serve other authors, renaming the company the Black Sun Press, following on Crosby’s obsession on the symbolism of the sun. The press rapidly gained notice for publishing beautifully bound, typographically flawless editions of unusual books. They took exquisite care with the books they published, choosing the finest papers and inks. They published early works of a number of writers before they were well known, including James Joyce’s Tales Told of Shem and Shaun (which was later integrated into Finnegans Wake). They published Kay Boyle’s first book-length work, Short Stores, in 1929. and works by Hart Crane, D. H. Lawrence, Ezra Pound, Archibald MacLeish, Ernest Hemingway, Laurence Sterne, and Eugene Jolas. The Black Sun Press evolved into one of the most important small presses in Paris in the 1920s. After Crosby died in a suicide pact with one of his many lovers, Caresse Crosby continued publishing into the 1940s. The Fire Princess On July 9, 1928, Crosby met 20-year-old Josephine Noyes Rotch, the daughter of Arthur and Helen Ludington Rotch in Boston. Ten years his junior, they met while she was shopping in Venice at the Lido for her wedding trousseau. She had belonged to the Vincent Club and the Junior League and graduated from Lee School before she had attended Bryn Mawr. After only two years at Bryn Mawr she left because she planned to marry Albert Bigelow. "She was dark and intense... since the season of her coming out in 1926-7, she had been known around Boston as fast, a 'bad egg’...with a good deal of sex appeal.” They met for sex as often as her eight days in Venice would allow. He would later call her the “Youngest Princess of the Sun” and the “Fire Princess.” She was also from a prominent Boston family that first settled in Provincetown on Cape Cod in 1690. Josephine would inspire Crosby’s next collection of poems which he dedicated to her, titled Transit of Venus. In a letter dated July 24, 1928, Crosby detailed the affair to his mother, in whom he had always confided: I am having an affair with a girl I met (not introduced) at the Lido. She is twenty and has charm and is called Josephine. I like girls when they are very young before they have any minds. Josephine and Crosby had an ongoing affair until June 21, 1929, when she married Albert Smith Bigelow. Their affair was over—until August, when Josephine contacted Crosby and they rekindled the affair as her husband became a first year graduate student of architecture at Harvard. Unlike his wife Caresse, Josephine was quarrelsome and prone to fits of jealousy. She bombarded Crosby with half incoherent cables and letters, anxious to set the date for their next tryst. Visit to United States On November 20, 1929, the Crosbys returned to the United States aboard the RMS Mauretania for a visit and the Harvard-Yale football game. Crosby and Josephine met and traveled to Detroit where they checked into the expensive ($12 a day—about $165 today) Book-Cadillac Hotel as Mr. and Mrs Harry Crane. For four days they took meals in their room, smoked opium, and had sex. On December 7, 1929, the lovers returned to New York where Josephine said she was going to return to Boston and her husband. Crosby’s friend Hart Crane threw a party that evening to celebrate his completion after seven years of his poem, The Bridge. The Black Sun Press was scheduled to publish it the next week, and he wanted to bid Crosby and Caresse bon voyage, since they were due to sail back to France the next week. Among the guests present were Margaret Robson, Malcolm Cowley, Walker Evans, E. E. Cummings, and William Carlos Williams. The party went on until nearly dawn. Crosby and Caresse made plans to see Crane again before they left for Europe on December 10 to attend the popular Broadway play Berkeley Square. On December 9 Josephine, who instead of returning to Boston had stayed with one of her bridesmaids in New York, sent a 36-line poem to Harry Crosby, who was staying with Caresse at the Savoy-Plaza Hotel. The last line of the poem read: Death is our marriage. On the same day, Harry Crosby wrote his final entry in his journal: One is not in love unless one desires to die with one’s beloved. There is only one happiness it is to love and to be loved. Murder and suicide On the evening of the play, December 10, 1929, Caresse, Crosby’s mother Henrietta Grew, and Hart Crane met for dinner before the play, but Crosby was a no-show. It was unlike him to worry Caresse needlessly. She called their friend Stanley Mortimer at his mother’s apartment, whose studio Crosby was known to use for his trysts. He agreed to check his studio. Mortimer had to enlist help to break open the locked door and found Crosby and Josephine’s bodies. Crosby was in bed with a .25 caliber bullet hole in his right temple next to Josephine, who had a matching hole in her left temple, in what appeared to be a suicide pact. Crosby was still clutching the Belgian automatic pistol in one hand, Josephine in the other. The steamship tickets he had bought that morning for the return to Europe with Caresse were in his pocket. The coroner also found in his pocket a cable from Josephine addressed to Crosby on the Mauretania before they arrived in New York: “CABLE GEORGE WHEN YOU ARRIVE AND WHERE I CAN TELEPHONE YOU IMMEDIATELY. I AM IMPATIENT.” A second cable from another girl simply said, “YES.” A picture of Zora, the 13-year-old girl he had sex with in Egypt, was reportedly found in his wallet. The coroner reported that Crosby’s toenails were painted red, and that he had a Christian cross tattooed on the sole of one foot and a pagan icon representing the sun on the other. The coroner concluded that Josephine had died at least two hours before Crosby. There was no suicide note, and newspapers ran sensational articles for days about the murder or suicide pact—they could not decide which. Crosby’s wedding ring was found crushed on the floor, not on his finger, where he always promised Caresse it would remain. Caresse refused to witness the carnage and begged Archibald MacLeish, who was in town from his farm, to take charge. While waiting for the doctors to finish their examination, MacLeish wondered if Crosby’s literary aspirations hadn’t contributed to his death. As I sat there looking at his corpse, seating myself where I wouldn’t have to see the horrible hole in back of his ear, I kept saying to him: you poor, damned, dumb bastard. He was the most literary man I ever met, despite the fact that he’d not yet become what you’d call a Writer. I never met anyone who was so imbued with literature; he was drowned in it. I think I’m close to deciding literature is the one thing never to be taken seriously... Crosby’s suicide, along with Hart Crane’s suicide two-and-a-half years later, were cited by later writers as emblematic of the Lost Generation. Scandal follows The next day the headlines revealed all: Tragedy and Disgrace. As Josephine had died at least two hours before Crosby, and there was no suicide note, newspapers ran articles for many days speculating about the murder or suicide pact. The New York Times front page blared, “COUPLE SHOT DEAD IN ARTISTS’ HOTEL; Suicide Compact Is Indicated Between Henry Grew Crosby and Harvard Man’s Wife. BUT MOTIVE IS UNKNOWN. He Was Socially Prominent in Boston—Bodies Found in Friend’s Suite.” The New York newspapers decided it was a murder-suicide. Gretchen Powell had lunch with Crosby the day of his death. Her memory of the luncheon supported the notion that Josephine was one of Crosby’s many passing fancies. She related that Crosby had told her “the Rotch girl was pestering him; he was exasperated; she had threatened to kill herself in the lobby of the Savoy-Plaza if he didn’t meet her at once.” The deaths polarized the several prominent families affected. The Rotch family considered Josephine’s death to be murder. Josephine’s erstwhile husband Albert Bigelow blamed Crosby for “seducing his wife and murdering her because he couldn’t have her.” Crosby’s poetry possibly gave the best clue to his motives. Death was “the hand that opens the door to our cage the home we instinctively fly to.” His death mortified proper society. Crosby’s biographer Wolff wrote, He had meant to do it; it was no mistake; it was not a joke. If anything of Harry Crosby commands respect, perhaps even awe, it was the unswerving character of his intention. He killed himself not from weariness or despair, but from conviction, and however irrational, or even ignoble, this conviction may have been, he held fast to it as to a principle. He killed himself on behalf of the idea of killing himself. Crosby’s death, given the macabre circumstances under which it occurred, scandalized Boston’s Back Bay society. Legacy Crosby as a poet was never more than a minor literary figure while he lived, and was remembered more for his scandalous suicide over his creative efforts. He has greater importance as a co-founder of the Black Sun Press, which Caresse continued to operate after his death. She also established, with Jacques Porel, a side venture, Crosby Continental Editions, that published paperback books by Ernest Hemingway, William Faulkner, and Dorothy Parker, among others. The paperback books did not sell well, and Crosby Continental closed in 1933. The Black Sun Press, however, continued publishing into the 1950s. The Black Sun Press produced finely crafted books in small editions, including works by, among others, D. H. Lawrence, Archibald MacLeish, James Joyce, Kay Boyle, and Hart Crane. Crosby’s friend Hart Crane committed suicide less than two years later. Malcolm Cowley, whom Crosby had published, wrote in his 1934 book Exile’s Return, that the death of “Harry Crosby becomes a symbol” of the rise and fall of the Jazz Age. He recited the excesses typified by Crosby’s extravagant lifestyle as evidence of the shallowness of society during that era. When he edited and reissued the book in 1951, he softened his opinion of Crosby somewhat. “I had written at length about the life of Harry Crosby, who I scarcely know,” he wrote, “in order to avoid discussing the more recent death of Hart Crane, whom I know so well that I couldn’t bear to write about him.” In 1931, Caresse also published Torchbearer, a collection of his poetry with an afterward by Ezra Pound, and Aphrodite in Flight, a seventy-five paragraph-long prose-poem and how-to manual for lovers that compared making love to a woman to flying planes. Caresse published a boxed set of Crosby’s work titled Collected poems of Harry Crosby containing Chariot of the Sun with D. H. Lawrence’s intro, Transit of Venus with T. S. Eliot’s intro, Sleeping Together with Stuart Gilbert’s intro and Torchbearer in 1931. It was hand-set in dorique type; only 50 copies were printed. During 1931 and 1932, Caresse collaborated with Harry’s mother Henrietta to publish letters he’d written to his family while serving in France from the summer of 1917 until he returned home in 1919. Henrietta added a chronology and brief preface to the letters. The book War Letters was published in a unnumbered edition of 125 copies. As of 2015, a leather-bound edition of the book was priced from $2,000 to $3,500. Caresse Crosby edited and published Crosby’s diaries and papers. She wrote and published Poems for Harry Crosby in 1931. She also published and translated some of the works of Ernest Hemingway, William Faulkner, Dorothy Parker among others. The Black Sun Press enjoyed the greatest longevity among the several expatriate presses founded in Paris during the 1920s. Through 1936, it published nearly three times as many titles as did Edward Titus through his Black Manikin Press. Books printed by the Black Sun Press are valued by collectors. Each book was hand-designed, beautifully printed, and illustrated with elegant typeface. A rare volume published by the Black Sun press of Hart Crane’s book-length poem The Bridge, including photos by Walker Evans, was sold by Christie’s in 2009 for US$21,250. In 2009, Neil Pearson, an antiquarian books expert, said that "A Black Sun book is the literary equivalent of a Braque or a Picasso painting—except it’s a few thousand pounds, not 20 million.” A new collection of Harry Crosby’s poetry, Ladders to the Sun: Poems by Harry Crosby was published by Soul Bay Press in April 2010. In 2004, Fine Line Features optioned Andrea Berloff’s first screenplay "Harry & Caresse." Lasse Hallström was initially attached to direct and Leslie Holleran was attached as a producer. Works * Sonnets for Caresse. (1925) Paris, Herbert Clarke. * Sonnets for Caresse. (1926) 2nd Edition. Paris, Herbert Clarke. * Sonnets for Caresse. (1926) 3rd Edition. Paris, Albert Messein. * Sonnets for Caresse. (1927) 4th Edition. Paris, Editions Narcisse. * Red Skeletons. (1927) Paris, Editions Narcisse. * Hindu Love Manual (1928) 20 copies * Chariot of the Sun. (1928) Paris, At the Sign of the Sundial. * Shadows of the Sun. (1928) Paris, Black Sun Press. * Transit of Venus. Volume 1 .(1928) Paris, Black Sun Press. * Transit of Venus. Volume 2. (1929) Paris, Black Sun Press. 1929 (500 copies printed) * Mad Queen. (1929) Paris, Black Sun Press. * Shadows of the Sun-Series Two. (1929) Paris, Black Sun Press. * The Sun. (1929) Paris, Black Sun Press. * Sleeping Together. (1929) Paris, Black Sun Press. (500 copies printed) * A Sentimental Journey Through France and Italy Laurence Sterne, (1929) Paris, illus. by Polia Chentoff 400 copies * Shadows of the Sun-Series Three. (1930) Paris, Black Sun Press. * Aphrodite in Flight: Being Some Observations on the Aerodynamics of Love. (1930 Paris, Black Sun Press. * Collected Poems of Harry Crosby. (4 Volumes). (1931–32) Paris, Black Sun Press. * War Letters. Preface by Henrietta Crosby. (1932) Paris, Black Sun Press. 125 unnumbered copies. References Wikipedia—https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Harry_Crosby

Born on July 21, 1899, in Garrettsville, Ohio, Harold Hart Crane was a highly anxious and volatile child. He began writing verse in his early teenage years, and though he never attended college, read regularly on his own, digesting the works of the Elizabethan dramatists and poets—Shakespeare, Marlowe, and Donne—and the nineteenth-century French poets—Vildrac, Laforgue, and Rimbaud. His father, a candy manufacturer, attempted to dissuade him from a career in poetry, but Crane was determined to follow his passion to write. Living in New York City, he associated with many important figures in literature of the time, including Allen Tate, Katherine Anne Porter, E. E. Cummings, and Jean Toomer, but his heavy drinking and chronic instability frustrated any attempts at lasting friendship. An admirer of T. S. Eliot, Crane combined the influences of European literature and traditional versification with a particularly American sensibility derived from Walt Whitman. His major work, the book-length poem, The Bridge, expresses in ecstatic terms a vision of the historical and spiritual significance of America. Like Eliot, Crane used the landscape of the modern, industrialized city to create a powerful new symbolic literature. Hart Crane committed suicide in 1932, at the age of thirty-three, by jumping from the deck of a steamship sailing back to New York from Mexico. A SELECTED BIBLIOGRAPHY Poetry The Complete Poems and Selected Letters and Prose (1966) The Bridge (1930) White Buildings (1926) Prose Letters (1952) References Poets.org – http://www.poets.org/poet.php/prmPID/233

Thomas Campbell (27 July 1777– 15 June 1844) was a Scottish poet chiefly remembered for his sentimental poetry dealing especially with human affairs. A co-founder of the Literary Association of the Friends of Poland, he was also one of the initiators of a plan to found what became University College London. In 1799, he wrote “The Pleasures of Hope”, a traditional 18th century didactic poem in heroic couplets. He also produced several stirring patriotic war songs—"Ye Mariners of England", “The Soldier’s Dream”, “Hohenlinden” and in 1801, “The Battle of Mad and Strange Turkish Princes”. Early life Born on High Street, Glasgow in 1777, he was the youngest of the eleven children of Alexander Campbell (1710–1801), son of the 6th and last Laird of Kirnan, Argyll, descended from the MacIver-Campbells. His mother, Margaret (b.1736), was the daughter of Robert Campbell of Craignish and Mary, daughter of Robert Simpson, “a celebrated Royal Armourer”. In about 1737, his father went to Falmouth, Virginia as a merchant in business with his wife’s brother Daniel Campbell, becoming a Tobacco Lord trading between there and Glasgow. They enjoyed a long period of prosperity until he lost his property and their old and respectable firm collapsed in consequence of the American Revolutionary War. Having personally lost nearly £20,000, Campbell’s father was nearly ruined. Several of Thomas’ brothers remained in Virginia, one of whom married a daughter of Patrick Henry. Both his parents were intellectually inclined, his father being a close friend of Thomas Reid (for whom Campbell was named) while his mother was known for her refined taste and love of literature and music. Thomas Campbell was educated at the High School of Glasgow and the University of Glasgow, where he won prizes for classics and verse-writing. He spent the holidays as a tutor in the western Highlands and his poems Glenara and the Ballad of Lord Ullin’s Daughter were written during this time while visiting the Isle of Mull. In 1797, Campbell travelled to Edinburgh to attend lectures on law. He continued to support himself as a tutor and through his writing, aided by Robert Anderson, the editor of the British Poets. Among his contemporaries in Edinburgh were Sir Walter Scott, Lord Henry Brougham, Lord Francis Jeffrey, Thomas Brown, John Leyden and James Grahame. These early days in Edinburgh influenced such works as The Wounded Hussar, The Dirge of Wallace and the Epistle to Three Ladies. Career In 1799, six months after the publication of the Lyrical Ballads of Wordsworth and Coleridge, “The Pleasures of Hope” was published. It is a rhetorical and didactic poem in the taste of his time, and owed much to the fact that it dealt with topics near to men’s hearts, with the French Revolution, the partition of Poland and with negro slavery. Its success was instantaneous, but Campbell was deficient in energy and perseverance and did not follow it up. He went abroad in June 1800 without any very definite aim, visited Gottlieb Friedrich Klopstock at Hamburg, and made his way to Regensburg, which was taken by the French three days after his arrival. He found refuge in a Scottish monastery. Some of his best lyrics, “Hohenlinden”, “Ye Mariners of England” and “The Soldier’s Dream”, belong to his German tour. He spent the winter in Altona, where he met an Irish exile, Anthony McCann, whose history suggested The Exile of Erin. He had at that time the intention of writing an epic on Edinburgh to be entitled “The Queen of the North”. On the outbreak of war between Denmark and England he hurried home, the “Battle of the Baltic” being drafted soon after. At Edinburgh he was introduced to the first Lord Minto, who took him in the next year to London as occasional secretary. In June 1803 appeared a new edition of the “Pleasures of Hope”, to which some lyrics were added. In 1803 Campbell married his second cousin, Matilda Sinclair, and settled in London. He was well received in Whig society, especially at Holland House. His prospects, however, were slight when in 1805 he received a government pension of £200. In that year the Campbells removed to Sydenham. Campbell was at this time regularly employed on the Star newspaper, for which he translated the foreign news. In 1809 he published a narrative poem in the Spenserian stanza, Gertrude of Wyoming—referring to the Wyoming Valley of Pennsylvania and the Wyoming Valley Massacre—with which were printed some of his best lyrics. He was slow and fastidious in composition, and the poem suffered from overelaboration. Francis Jeffrey wrote to the author: “Your timidity or fastidiousness, or some other knavish quality, will not let you give your conceptions glowing, and bold, and powerful, as they present themselves; but you must chasten, and refine, and soften them, forsooth, till half their nature and grandeur is chiselled away from them. Believe me, the world will never know how truly you are a great and original poet till you venture to cast before it some of the rough pearls of your fancy.” In 1812 he delivered a series of lectures on poetry in London at the Royal Institution; and he was urged by Sir Walter Scott to become a candidate for the chair of literature at Edinburgh University. In 1814 he went to Paris, making there the acquaintance of the elder Schlegel, of Baron Cuvier and others. His pecuniary anxieties were relieved in 1815 by a legacy of £4000. He continued to occupy himself with his Specimens of the British Poets, the design of which had been projected years before. The work was published in 1819. It contains on the whole an admirable selection with short lives of the poets, and prefixed to it an essay on poetry containing much valuable criticism. In 1820 he accepted the editorship of the New Monthly Magazine, and in the same year made another tour in Germany. Four years later appeared his “Theodric”, a not very successful poem of domestic life. Later life He took an active share in the foundation of University College London (originally known as London University), visiting Berlin to inquire into the German system of education, and making recommendations which were adopted by Lord Brougham. He was elected Lord Rector of Glasgow University (1826–1829) in competition against Sir Walter Scott. Campbell retired from the editorship of the New Monthly Magazine in 1830, and a year later made an unsuccessful venture with The Metropolitan Magazine. He had championed the cause of the Poles in “The Pleasures of Hope”, and the news of the capture of Warsaw by the Russians in 1831 affected him as if it had been the deepest of personal calamities. “Poland preys on my heart night and day,” he wrote in one of his letters, and his sympathy found a practical expression in the foundation in London of the Literary Association of the Friends of Poland. In 1834 he travelled to Paris and Algiers, where he wrote his Letters from the South (printed 1837). The small production of Campbell may be partly explained by his domestic calamities. His wife died in 1828. Of his two sons, one died in infancy and the other became insane. His own health suffered, and he gradually withdrew from public life. He died at Boulogne on 15 June 1844 and was buried on 3 July 1844 Westminster Abbey at Poet’s Corner. Campbell’s other works include a Life of Mrs Siddons (1842), and a narrative poem, “The Pilgrim of Glencoe” (1842). See The Life and Letters of Thomas Campbell (3 vols., 1849), edited by William Beattie, M.D.; Literary Reminiscences and Memoirs of Thomas Campbell (1860), by Cyrus Redding; The Complete Poetical Works Of Thomas Campbell (1860); The Poetical Works of Thomas Campbell (1875), in the Aldine Edition of the British Poets, edited by the Rev. V. Alfred Hill, with a sketch of the poet’s life by William Allingham; and the Oxford Edition of the Complete Works of Thomas Campbell (1908), edited by J. Logie Robertson. See also Thomas Campbell by J. Cuthbert Hadden, (Edinburgh: Oliphant, Anderson and Ferrier, 1899, Famous Scots Series), and a selection by Lewis Campbell (1904) for the Golden Treasury Series. References Wikipedia—https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thomas_Campbell_(poet)

Thomas Chatterton (20 November 1752– 24 August 1770) was an English poet and forger of pseudo-medieval verse. Although fatherless and raised in poverty, he was an exceptionally studious child, publishing mature work by the age of eleven. He was able to pass-off as an imaginary 15th-century poet called Thomas Rowley, chiefly because few people at the time were familiar with medieval poetry, though he was denounced by Horace Walpole. At seventeen, he sought outlets for his political writings in London, having impressed the Lord Mayor, William Beckford, and the radical leader John Wilkes, but his earnings were not enough to keep him, and he poisoned himself in despair. His unusual life and death attracted much interest among the romantic poets, and Alfred de Vigny wrote a play about him that is still performed today. The oil-painting The Death of Chatterton by Pre-Raphaelite artist Henry Wallis has enjoyed lasting fame.

Joseph Seamon Cotter Sr. (February 2, 1861– March 14, 1949) was a poet, writer, playwright, and community leader raised in Louisville, Kentucky (but born in Nelson County, Kentucky). Cotter was one of the earliest African-American playwrights to be published. He was known as “Kentucky’s first Negro poet with real creative ability.” Born at the start of the American Civil War, raised in poverty with no formal education until the age of 22, and living through a time of monumental change, Cotter also became an educator and an advocate of black education. Personal life Cotter grew up in a family of mixed racial heritage. His father, Michael J. Cotter, was a white man of Scots-Irish ancestry, and his mother, Martha Vaughn, was a freeborn black of mixed heritage (one of several children born to an African slave mother and an English-Cherokee father). On July 22, 1891, Cotter married Maria F. Cox, a fellow teacher, with whom he had four children: Leonidas, Florence, Olivia, and Joseph Seamon Cotter Jr (a distinguished poet-playwright in his own merit). Education After completing the third grade, Cotter dropped out to help support his family. Cotter worked in manual labor and various odd jobs until the age of 22, where he joined the first and newly created Louisville night school for black students. Cotter attended night school for ten months, earning his high school diploma and teaching credentials. According to Metzger (1989): “There is little specific information about either the extent of Cotter’s education—it seems certain that he never attended college or completed a degree-granting program—or his professional life as an educator. Although some writers had felt that Cotter must have attended college, his love of writing and of literature might just have well stemmed from the many books that his mother had read to him as a child. And although Cotter’s contributions to black education are now seen as extremely important, at the time he was working, few details of such work were preserved for later study. What is now certain is that Cotter became a respected writer, although when he first began to write is not clear.” Career in education Once becoming qualified to teach, Cotter got his first job in the Cloverport Public School system. The conditions at Cloverport were extremely poor. Cotter made the best of teaching children in a small one-roomed school house with dirt flooring and no heating. This marked the start of Cotter’s long dedication to the education of black children and a commitment to his community. After two years teaching at Cloverport, Cotter taught at a nearby private school before moving to the Louisville Public School system two years later. His first job within the Louisville Public School system was at Western Colored School, which was located in an all-black neighborhood. Here Cotter would teach for the next four years, from 1889 to 1893. Attesting to his belief in black education, in 1893 Cotter founded the Paul Lawrence Dunbar School, named after the poet and friend Paul Laurence Dunbar. Cotter served as principal of this black high school until 1911, whereupon he took the position of principal at Samuel Coleridge-Taylor School and held the post until 1942. Along with his 53-year career as an educator, Cotter worked for racial advancement with many local and national organizations, including Louisville Colored Orphans Home Society, Kentucky Educational Association, Author’s League, Association for the Study of Negro Life and History, and NAACP. Literary contributions Cotter’s literary contributions include nine published works. Among these works are 4 volumes of poetry: A Rhyming (1895); Links of Friendship (1898); A White Song and a Black One (1909); and Collected Poems (1938). Cotter’s other publications include: Sequel to “The Pied Piper of Hamelin,” and Other Poems (1939), a collection of poetry and prose; Negroes and Others at Work and Play (1947); Caleb, the Degenerate; A Play in Four Acts: A Study of the Types, Customs, and Needs of the American Negro (1903); and 2 collections of prose, Negro Tales (1912), and Twenty-fifth Anniversary of the Founding of Colored Parkland or “Little Africa,” Louisville, Ky., 1891–1916 (1934). Cotter also often contributed to periodicals such as the Louisville Courier-Journal (from 1884), National Baptist Magazine (1894–1908), Voice of the Negro (1904–07), Southern Teachers Advocate (Kentucky; 1905-6), and Alexander’s Magazine (1909). According to William S. Ward, "…[Cotter’s] writings have never won him high recognition, but he has fared rather well at the hands of black historians." Cotter’s writing is known to utilize both dialect and standard English to advocate race advancement, “to be gained by a mixture of race pride, humility, hard work, education, and a positive, optimistic outlook.” Historian Joan R. Sherman also notes that a common theme seen in Cotter’s writing, from his earliest poems to The Negro’s Ten Commandments (1947), is that "he consistently advocated this gospel: (5) Read not thyself out of toiling with the hands, and toil not thyself out of reading; for reading makes one akin to the ox. Therefore he who simply dreams is dying, and he who dreams not is already dead. (7) Learn thou the worth of a dollar and how to keep it from damning thee. (9) Socially thou shalt go no nearer thy brother than he comes to thee. Aversion in him should slay the thought of advance in thee. (10) If thou hast a mind to live by being honest, industrious, frugal and self-sacrificing, remain in the South where thou shalt surely reap thy character’s worth; but if thou hast a mind to die through sloth, ignorance and folly, get thee far from it, for the burden of burying such is becoming intolerable.” Bibliography * Cotter, Joseph S. A Rhyming. Louisville, Ky.: New South Publishing, Co., 1895. 32 pp. Copy: DLC * Cotter, Joseph S. Links of Friendship. Louisville, Ky.: Bradley & Gilbert Co., 1898. 64 pp. 54 poems. Portrait. Copies: DHU, DLC, NN, NNSch. * Cotter, Joseph S. Caleb, the Degenerate; A Play in Four Acts: A Study of the Types, Customs, and Needs of the American Negro. Louisville, Ky.: Bradley & Gilbert Co., 1903. 57 pp. Portrait. *Copies: DHU, DLC, NN, NNSch copy inscribed by Cotter to the Rev. Edward Everett Hale. * Cotter, Joseph S. Negro Tales. New York: Cosmopolitan Press, 1912. 148 pp. 17 tales. Copies: DHU, NNsch. * Cotter, Joseph S. A White Song and a Black One. Louisville, Ky.: Bradley & Gilbert Co., 1909. 64 pp. 48 poems. Copies: DHU, DLC, NN, NNSch copy inscribed: “With compliments of Joseph S. Cotter.” * Cotter, Joseph S. Twenty-fifth Anniversary of the Founding of Colored Parkland or “Little Africa” Louisville, Ky., 1801–1916. 1934. Louisville, Ky.: I. Willis Cole Publishing Co., 1934. Copy: DHU. * Cotter, Joseph S. Collected Poems. New York: Henry Harrison, 1938. 78 pp. 73 poems. Portrait. Copies: DHU, DLC, NN, NNSch * Cotter, Joseph S. Sequel to “The Pied Piper of Hamelin,” and Other Poems. New York: Henry Harrison, 1939. 93 pp. 69 poems. Copies: DHU, DLC, NN, NNSch. Copies: DHU, DLC, NN, NNSch * Cotter, Joseph S. Negroes and Others at Work and Play. New York: Paebar Co., 1947. 63 pp. 7 poems, aphorisms, tales, sketches, plays, songs. Further reading * Brooks, A. Russell. “Joseph Seamon Cotter, Sr.,” In Dictionary of Literary Biography, vol. 50: 62–70. * Hatch, James V., ed. Black Theatre, U.S.A.: Forty-Five Plays by Black Americans. New York: Free Press/Macmillan, 1974. * Kerlin, Robert T. “A Poet from Bardstown.” South Atlantic Quarterly 20 (July 1921) 213-21. * Shockley, Ann Allen. “Joseph S. Cotter, Sr.: Biographical Sketch of a Black Louisville Bard,” College Language Association Journal 18 (March 1975), 327–340. * Townsend, John Wilson. “Kentucky’s Dunbar: Joseph Seamon Cotter.” In Lore of the Meadowland, 23–26. Lexington, Ky.: J.L. Richardson, 1911. References Wikipedia—https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joseph_Seamon_Cotter,_Sr.

Rafael Cadenas (Barquisimeto, Lara; 1930) poeta y ensayista venezolano. Formó parte del grupo «Tabla Redonda». Profesor de la Escuela de Letras de la Universidad Central de Venezuela.

Alice Guerin Crist (1876–1941) was an Australian poet, author and journalist born in Clare Castle, Ireland on 6 February 1876 to Patrick and Winifred (née Rohan or Rouhan) Guerin. When she was two years old, the family migrated to Queensland, where her father taught in rural schools, including as head teacher of Tent Hill Upper school in May 1880.

Gregory Nunzio Corso (March 26, 1930– January 17, 2001) was an American poet, youngest of the inner circle of Beat Generation writers (with Jack Kerouac, Allen Ginsberg, and William S. Burroughs). Early life Born Nunzio Corso at St. Vincent’s hospital (later called the Poets’ hospital after Dylan Thomas died there), Corso later selected the name “Gregory” as a confirmation name. Within Little Italy and its community he was “Nunzio,” while he dealt with others as “Gregory.” He often would use “Nunzio” as short for “Annunziato,” the announcing angel Gabriel, hence a poet. Corso identified with not only Gabriel but also the Greco-Roman God Hermes, the divine messenger. Corso’s mother, Michelina Corso (born Colonna) was born in Miglianico, Abruzzo, Italy, and immigrated to the United States at the age of nine, with her mother and four other sisters. At 16, she married Sam Corso, a first-generation Italian American, also teenage, and gave birth to Nunzio Corso the same year. They lived at the corner of Bleecker and MacDougal, the heart of Greenwich Village and upper Little Italy. Childhood Sometime in his first year, Corso’s mother mysteriously abandoned him, leaving him at the New York Foundling Home, a branch of the Catholic Church Charities. Corso’s father, Sam “Fortunato” Corso, a gruff garment center worker, found the infant and promptly put him in a foster home. Michelina came to New York but her life was threatened by Sam. One of Michelina’s sisters was married to a New Jersey mobster who offered to give Michelina her “vengeance,” that is to kill Sam. Michelina declined and returned to Trenton without her child. Sam consistently told Corso that his mother had returned to Italy and deserted the family. He was also told that she was a prostitute and was “disgraziata” (disgraced) and forced into Italian exile. Sam told the young boy several times, “I should have flushed you down the toilet.” It was 67 years before Corso learned the truth of his mother’s disappearance. Corso spent the next 11 years in foster care in at least five different homes. His father rarely visited him. When he did, Corso was often abused: “I’d spill jello and the foster home people would beat me. Then my father would visit and he’d beat me again—a double whammy.” As a foster child, Corso was among thousands that the Church aided during the Depression, with the intention of reconstituting families as the economy picked up. Corso went to Catholic parochial schools, was an altar boy and a gifted student. His father, in order to avoid the military draft, brought Gregory home in 1941. Nevertheless, Sam Corso was drafted and shipped overseas. Corso, then alone, became a homeless child on the streets of Little Italy. For warmth he slept in subways in the winter, and then slept on rooftops during the summer. He continued to attend Catholic school, not telling authorities he was living on the streets. With “permission,” he stole breakfast bread from Vesuvio Bakery, 160 Prince Street in Little Italy. Street food stall merchants would give him food in exchange for running errands. Adolescence At age 13, Corso was asked to deliver a toaster to a neighbor. While he was running the errand, a passerby offered money for the toaster, and Corso sold it. He used the money to buy a tie and white shirt, and dressed up to see the film The Song of Bernadette, about the mystical appearance of the Virgin Mary to Bernadette Soubirous at Lourdes. On returning from the movie, the police apprehended him. Corso claimed he was seeking a miracle, namely, to find his mother. Corso had a lifelong affection for saints and holy men: “They were my only heroes.” Nonetheless, he was arrested for petty larceny and incarcerated in The Tombs, New York’s infamous jail. Corso, even though only thirteen years old, was celled next to an adult, criminally insane murderer who had stabbed his wife repeatedly with a screwdriver. The exposure left Corso traumatized. Neither Corso’s stepmother nor his paternal grandmother would post his $50 bond. With his own mother missing and unable to make bail, he remained in the Tombs. Later, in 1944 during a New York blizzard, a 14-year-old freezing Corso broke into his tutor’s office for warmth, and fell asleep on a desk. He slept through the blizzard and was arrested for breaking and entering and booked into the Tombs a second time, with adults. Terrified of other inmates, he was sent to the psychiatric ward of Bellevue Hospital Center and later released. At the age of seventeen, on the eve of his eighteenth birthday, Corso broke into a tailor shop and stole an over-sized suit to dress for a date. Police records indicate he was arrested two blocks from the shop. He spent the night in the Tombs and was arraigned the next morning as an 18-year-old with prior offenses. No longer a “youthful offender,” he was given a two to three years sentence to Clinton State Prison, in Dannemora, New York, on the Canadian border. It was New York’s toughest prison, the site of the state’s electric chair. Corso always has expressed a curious gratitude for Clinton making him a poet. His second book of poems, Gasoline, is dedicated to “the angels of Clinton Prison who, in my seventeenth year, handed me, from all the cells surrounding me, books of illumination.” Interestingly, Clinton later became known as the “poets’ prison,” as rap poets served time there. Corso at Clinton Correctional While being transported to Clinton, Corso, terrified of prison and the prospect of rape, concocted a story of why he was sent there. He told hardened Clinton inmates he and two friends had devised the wild plan of taking over New York City by means of walkie-talkies, projecting a series of improbable and complex robberies. Communicating by walkie-talkie, each of the three boys took up an assigned position—one inside the store to be robbed, one outside on the street to watch for the police, and a third, Corso, the master-planner, in a small room nearby dictating the orders. According to Corso, he was in the small room giving the orders when the police came. In light of Corso’s youth, his imaginative yarn earned him bemused attention at Clinton. Richard Biello, a Capo, asked Corso who he was connected with, that is, what New York crime family did he come from, talking such big crimes as walkie-talkie robberies...,"I’m independent!" Corso shot back, hoping to keep his distance from the Mob inmates. A week later, in the prison showers, Corso was grabbed by a handful of inmates, and the 18-year-old was about to be raped. Biello happened in and commented, “Corso! You don’t look so independent right now.” Biello waved off the would-be rapists, who were afraid of Mafia reprisals. Thus Corso fell under the protection of powerful Mafioso inmates, and became something of a mascot because he was the youngest inmate in the prison, and he was entertaining. Corso would cook the steaks and veal brought from the outside by Mafia underlings in the “courts”—55-gallon-barrel barbecues and picnic tables—assigned to the influential prisoners. Clinton also had a ski run right in the middle of “the yards,” and Corso learned to downhill ski and taught the Mafiosi. He entertained his mobster elders as a court jester, quick with ripostes and jokes. Corso would often cite the three propositions given him by a Mafia capo: "1) Don’t serve time, let time serve you. 2) Don’t take your shoes off because with a 2 -3 you’re walking right out of here. 3) When you’re in the yard talking to three guys, see four. See yourself. Dig yourself.” Interestingly, Corso was jailed in the very cell just months before vacated by Charles “Lucky” Luciano. While imprisoned, Luciano had donated an extensive library to the prison. The cell was also equipped with a phone and self-controlled lighting as Luciano was, from prison, cooperating with the U.S. Government’s wartime effort, providing Mafia aid in policing the New York waterfront, and later helping in Naples, Italy through his control of the Camorra. In this special cell, Corso read after lights-out thanks to a light specially positioned for Luciano to work late. Corso was encouraged to read and study by his Cosa Nostra mentors, who recognized his genius. There, Corso began writing poetry. He studied the Greek and Roman classics, and consumed encyclopedias and dictionaries. He credited the The Story of Civilization, Will and Ariel Durant’s ground-breaking compendium of history and philosophy, for his general education and philosophical sophistication. Release and return to New York City In 1951, 21-year-old Gregory Corso worked in the garment center by day, and at night was a mascot yet again, this time at one of Greenwich Village’s first lesbian bars, the Pony Stable Inn. The women gave Corso a table at which he wrote poetry. One night a Columbia College student, Allen Ginsberg, happened into the Pony Stable and saw Corso... “he was good looking, and wondered if he was gay, or what.” Corso, who was definitely not gay, was not uncomfortable with same sex come-ons after his time in prison, and thought he could score a beer off Ginsberg. He showed Ginsberg some of the poems he was writing, a number of them from prison, and Ginsberg immediately recognized Corso as “spiritually gifted.” One poem described a woman who sunbathed in a window bay across the street from Corso’s room on 12th Street. Astonishingly, the woman happened to be Ginsberg’s erstwhile girl friend, with whom he lived in one of his rare forays into heterosexuality. Ginsberg invited Corso back to their apartment and asked the woman if she would satisfy Corso’s sexual curiosity. She agreed, but Corso, still a virgin, got too nervous as she disrobed, and he ran from the apartment, struggling with his pants. Ginsberg and Corso became fast friends. All his life, Ginsberg had a sexual attraction to Corso, which remained unrequited. Corso joined the Beat circle and was adopted by its co-leaders, Jack Kerouac and Allen Ginsberg, who saw in the young street-wise writer a potential for expressing the poetic insights of a generation wholly separate from those preceding it. At this time he developed a crude and fragmented mastery of Shelley, Marlowe, and Chatterton. Shelley’s “A Defence of Poetry” (1840), with its emphasis on the ability of genuine poetic impulse to stimulate “unapprehended combinations of thought” that led to the “moral improvement of man,” prompted Corso to develop a theory of poetry roughly consistent with that of the developing principles of the Beat poets. For Corso, poetry became a vehicle for change, a way to redirect the course of society by stimulating individual will. He referred to Shelley often as a “Revolutionary of Spirit”, which he considered Ginsberg and himself to be. Cambridge In 1954, Corso moved to Cambridge, where several important poets, including Edward Marshall and John Wieners, were experimenting with the poetics of voice. The center for Corso’s life there was not “the School of Boston,” as these poets were called, but Harvard University’s Widener Library, where he spent his days reading the great works of poetry and also auditing classes in the Greek and Roman Classics. Corso’s appreciation of the classics had come from the Durants’ books that he had read in prison. At Harvard he considered becoming a classics scholar. Corso, penniless, lived on a dorm room floor in Elliott house, welcomed by students Peter Sourian, Bobby Sedgwick (brother of Edie), and Paul Grand. He would dress up for dinner and not be noticed. Members of the elite Porcellian Club reported Corso to the Harvard administration as an interloper. Dean Archibald MacLeish met with Corso intending to expel him, but Corso showed him his poems and MacLeish relented and allowed Corso to be a non-matriculating student—a poet in residence. Corso’s first published poems appeared in the Harvard Advocate in 1954, and his play In This Hung-up Age—concerning a group of Americans who, after their bus breaks down midway across the continent, are trampled by buffalo—was performed by the esteemed Poets’ Theater the following year, along with T.S. Eliot’s “Murder in the Cathedral.” Harvard and Radcliffe students, notably Grand, Sourian and Sedgwick, underwrote the printing expenses of Corso’s first book, The Vestal Lady on Brattle, and Other Poems. The poems featured in the volume are usually considered apprentice work heavily indebted to Corso’s reading. They are, however, unique in their innovative use of jazz rhythms—most notably in “Requiem for 'Bird’ Parker, musician,” which many call the strongest poem in the book—cadences of spoken English, and hipster jargon. Corso once explained his use of rhythm and meter in an interview with Gavin Selerie for Riverside Interviews: “My music is built in—it’s already natural. I don’t play with the meter.” In other words, Corso believes the meter must arise naturally from the poet’s voice; it is never consciously chosen. In a review of The Vestal Lady on Brattle for Poetry, Reuel Denney asked whether “a small group jargon” such as bop language would “sound interesting” to those who were not part of that culture. Corso, he concluded, “cannot balance the richness of the bebop group jargon... with the clarity he needs to make his work meaningful to a wider-than-clique audience.” Ironically, within a few years, that “small group jargon”, the Beat lingo, became a national idiom, featuring words such as “man,” “cool,” “dig,” “chick,” “hung up,” etc. Despite Corso’s reliance on traditional forms and archaic diction, he remained a street-wise poet, described by Bruce Cook in The Beat Generation as “an urchin Shelley.” Biographer Carolyn Gaiser suggested that Corso adopted “the mask of the sophisticated child whose every display of mad spontaneity and bizarre perception is consciously and effectively designed”—as if he is in some way deceiving his audience. But the poems at their best are controlled by an authentic, distinctive, and enormously effective voice that can range from sentimental affection and pathos to exuberance and dadaist irreverence toward almost anything except poetry itself. San Francisco, “Howl”, and the Beat Phenomenon Corso and Ginsberg decided to head to San Francisco, separately. Corso wound up temporarily in Los Angeles and worked at the L.A. Examiner news morgue. Ginsberg was delayed in Denver. They were drawn by reports of an iconoclast circle of poets, including Gary Snyder, Lawrence Ferlinghetti, Michael McClure, Philip Whalen and Lew Welch. An older literary mentor, the socialist writer Kenneth Rexroth, lent his apartment as a Friday-night literary salon (Ginsberg’s mentor William Carlos Williams, an old friend of Rexroth’s, had given him an introductory letter). Wally Hedrick [13] wanted to organize the famous Six Gallery reading, and Ginsberg wanted Rexroth to serve as master of ceremonies, in a sense to bridge generations. Philip Lamantia, Michael McClure, Philip Whalen, Allen Ginsberg and Gary Snyder read on October 7, 1955, before 100 people (including Kerouac, up from Mexico City). Lamantia read poems of his late friend John Hoffman. At his first public reading Ginsberg performed the just-finished first part of “Howl.” Gregory Corso arrived late the next day, missing the historic reading, at which he had been scheduled to read. The Six Gallery was a success, and the evening led to many more readings by the now locally famous Six Gallery poets. It was also a marker of the beginning of the West Coast Beat movement, since the 1956 publication of Howl (City Lights Pocket Poets, no. 4) and its obscenity trial in 1957 brought it to nationwide attention. Ginsberg and Corso hitchhiked from San Francisco, visiting Henry Miller in Big Sur, and stopped off in Los Angeles. As guests of Anaïs Nin and writer Lawrence Lipton, Corso and Ginsberg gave a reading to a gathering of L.A. literati. Ginsberg took the audience off-guard, by proclaiming himself and Corso as poets of absolute honesty, and they both proceeded to strip bare naked of clothes, shocking even the most avant-garde of the audience. Corso and Ginsberg then hitchhiked to Mexico City to visit Kerouac who was holed up in a room above a whorehouse, writing a novel, “Tristessa.” After a three-week stay in Mexico City, Ginsberg left, and Corso waited for a plane ticket. His lover, Hope Savage, convinced her father, Henry Savage Jr., the mayor of Camden, S.C., to send Corso a plane ticket to Washington, D.C. Corso had been invited by the Library of Congress poet (precursor to U.S. Poet Laureate) Randall Jarrell and his wife Mary, to live with them, and become Jarrell’s poetic protege. Jarrell, unimpressed with the other Beats, found Corso’s work to be original and believed he held great promise. Corso stayed with the Jarrells for two months, enjoying the first taste of family life ever. However, Kerouac showed up and crashed at the Jarrells’, often drunk and loud, and got Corso to carouse with him. Corso was disinvited by the Jarrells and returned to New York. To Paris and the “Beat Hotel” In 1957, Allen Ginsberg voyaged with Peter Orlovsky to visit William S. Burroughs in Morocco. They were joined by Kerouac, who was researching the French origins of his family. Corso, already in Europe, joined them in Tangiers and, as a group, they made an ill-fated attempt to take Burroughs’ fragmented writings and organize them into a text (which later would become Naked Lunch). Burroughs was strung out on heroin and became jealous of Ginsberg’s unrequited attraction for Corso, who left Tangiers for Paris. In Paris, Corso introduced Ginsberg and Orlovsky to a Left Bank lodging house above a bar at 9 rue Gît-le-Coeur, that he named the Beat Hotel. They were soon joined by William Burroughs and others. It was a haven for young expatriate painters, writers and musicians. There, Ginsberg began his epic poem Kaddish, Corso composed his poems Bomb and Marriage, and Burroughs (with Brion Gysin’s help) put together Naked Lunch from previous writings. This period was documented by the photographer Harold Chapman, who moved in at about the same time, and took pictures of the residents of the hotel until it closed in 1963. Corso’s Paris sojourn resulted in his third volume of poetry, The Happy Birthday of Death (1960), Minutes to Go (1960, visual poetry deemed “cut-ups”) with William S. Burroughs, Sinclair Beiles, and Brion Gysin, The American Express (1961, an Olympia Press novel), and Long Live Man (1962, poetry). Corso fell out with his publisher of Gasoline, Lawrence Ferlinghetti of City Lights Bookstore, who objected to “Bomb,” a position Ferlinghetti later rued and for which he apologized. Corso’s work found a strong reception at New Directions Publishing, founded by James Laughlin, who had heard of Corso through Harvard connections. New Directions was considered the premier publisher of poetry, with Ezra Pound, Dylan Thomas, Marianne Moore, Wallace Stevens, Thomas Merton, Denise Levertov, James Agee, and ironically, Lawrence Ferlinghetti. While in Europe Corso searched for his lover, Hope Savage, who had disappeared from New York, saying she was headed to Paris. He visited Rome and Greece, sold encyclopedias in Germany, hung out with jazz trumpeter Chet Baker in Amsterdam, and with Ginsberg set the staid Oxford Union in turmoil with his reading of “Bomb,” which the Oxford students mistakenly believed was pro-nuclear war (as had Ferlinghetti), while they and other campuses were engaged in “ban the bomb” demonstrations. A student threw a shoe at Corso, and both he and Ginsberg left before Ginsberg could read “Howl.” Corso returned to New York in 1958, amazed that he and his compatriots had become famous, or notorious, emerging literary figures. Return to New York– The “Beatniks” In late 1958, Corso reunited with Ginsberg and Orlovsky. They were astonished that before they left for Europe they had sparked a social movement, which San Francisco columnist Herb Caen called, “Beat-nik,” combining “beat” with the Russian “Sputnik,” as if to suggest that the Beat writers were both “out there” and vaguely Communist. San Francisco’s obscenity trial of Lawrence Ferlinghetti for publishing Ginsberg’s “Howl” had ended in an acquittal, and the national notoriety made “The Beats” famous, adored and ridiculed. Upon their return, Ginsberg, Corso, Kerouac and Burroughs were published in the venerable Chicago Review, but before the volume was sold, University of Chicago President Robert Hutchins deemed it pornographic and had all copies confiscated. The Chicago editors promptly resigned and started an alternative literary magazine, The Big Table. Ginsberg and Corso took a bus from New York for the “Big Table” launch, which again propelled them into the national spotlight. Studs Terkel’s interview of the two was a madcap romp which set off a wave of publicity. Controversy followed them and they relished making the most of their outlaw and pariah image. Time and Life magazines had a particular dislike of the two, hurling invective and insult that Corso and Ginsberg hoped they could bootstrap into yet more publicity. The Beat Generation (so named by Kerouac) was galvanized and young people began dressing with berets, toreador pants, and beards, and carrying bongos. Corso would quip that he never grew a beard, didn’t own a beret, and couldn’t fathom bongos. Corso and Ginsberg traveled widely to college campuses, reading together. Ginsberg’s “Howl” provided the serious fare and Corso’s “Bomb” and “Marriage” provided the humor and bonhomie. New York’s Beat scene erupted and spilled over to the burgeoning folk music craze in the Village, Corso’s and Ginsberg’s home ground. An early participant was a newly arrived Bob Dylan: “I came out of the wilderness and just fell in with the Beat scene, the Bohemian, the Be Bop crowd. It was all pretty connected.” “It was Jack Kerouac, Ginsberg, Corso, Ferlinghetti... I got in at the tail end of that and it was magic.” –Bob Dylan in America. Corso also published in the avant garde little magazine Nomad at the beginning of the 1960s. During the early 1960s Corso married Sally November, an English teacher who grew up in Cleveland, Ohio and attended Shaker High School, and graduated from the University of Michigan. At first, Corso mimicked “Marriage” and moved to Cleveland to work in Sally’s father’s florist shop. Then the couple lived in Manhattan and Sally was known to Allen Ginsberg, Peter Orlovsky, Larry Rivers and others in the beat circle at that time. The marriage, while a failure, did produce a child, Miranda Corso. Corso maintained contact with Sally and his daughter sporadically during his lifetime. Sally, who subsequently remarried, resides on the Upper East Side of Manhattan and has kept contact with one of the iconic females associated with the Beat movement, Hettie Jones. Corso married two other times and had sons and a daughter. As the Beats were supplanted in the 1960s by the Hippies and other youth movements, Corso experienced his own wilderness years. He struggled with alcohol and drugs. He later would comment that his addictions masked the pain of having been abandoned and emotionally deprived and abused. Poetry was his purest means of transcending his traumas, but substance abuse threatened his poetic output. He lived in Rome for many years, and later married in Paris and taught in Greece, all the while traveling widely. He strangely remained close to the Catholic Church as critic and had a loose identification as a lapsed Catholic. His collection Dear Fathers was several letters commenting on needed reforms in the Vatican. In 1969, Corso published a volume, Elegiac Feelings American, whose lead poem, dedicated to the recently deceased Jack Kerouac, is regarded by some critics as Corso’s best poem. In 1981 he published poems mostly written while residing in Europe, entitled Herald of the Autochthonic Spirit. In 1972, Rose Holton and her sister met Corso on the second day of their residence at the Chelsea Hotel in New York City: “He sold us on the Chelsea and sold us on himself. Everything that life can throw at you was reflected in his very being. It was impossible for him to be boring. He was outrageous, always provocative, alternately full of indignation or humor, never censoring his words or behavior. But the main thing is that Gregory was authentic. He could play to the audience, but he was never a phony poseur. He was the real deal. He once explained the trajectory of creative achievement: ”There is talent, there is genius, then there is the divine." Gregory inhabited the divine.” Poetry Corso’s first volume of poetry The Vestal Lady on Brattle was published in 1955 (with the assistance of students at Harvard, where he had been auditing classes). Corso was the second of the Beats to be published (after only Kerouac’s The Town and the City), despite being the youngest. His poems were first published in the Harvard Advocate. In 1958, Corso had an expanded collection of poems published as number 8 in the City Lights Pocket Poets Series: Gasoline & The Vestal Lady on Brattle. Of his many notable poems are the following: “Bomb” (a “concrete poem” formatted in typed paper slips of verse, arranged in the shape of a mushroom cloud), “Elegiac Feelings American” of the recently deceased Jack Kerouac, and “Marriage,” a humorous meditation on the institution, perhaps his signature poem. And later in life, “The Whole Mess Almost.” “Marriage” excerpt: Should I get married? Should I be good? Astound the girl next door with my velvet suit and faustus hood? Don’t take her to movies but to cemeteries tell all about werewolf bathtubs and forked clarinets then desire her and kiss her and all the preliminaries and she going just so far and I understanding why not getting angry saying You must feel! It’s beautiful to feel! Instead take her in my arms lean against an old crooked tombstone and woo her the entire night the constellations in the sky— When she introduces me to her parents back straightened, hair finally combed, strangled by a tie, should I sit knees together on their 3rd degree sofa and not ask Where’s the bathroom? How else to feel other than I am, often thinking Flash Gordon soap— O how terrible it must be for a young man seated before a family and the family thinking We never saw him before! He wants our Mary Lou! After tea and homemade cookies they ask What do you do for a living? Should I tell them? Would they like me then? Say All right get married, we’re losing a daughter but we’re gaining a son— And should I then ask Where’s the bathroom? O God, and the wedding! All her family and her friends and only a handful of mine all scroungy and bearded just wait to get at the drinks and food— In “Marriage,” Corso tackles the possibilities of marriage. It was among his “title poems,” with “Power,” “Army,” and others that explore a concept. “Should I get married?” (1), the speaker begins. Could marriage bring about the results that the speaker is looking for? Coming “home to her” (54) and sitting "by the fireplace and she in the kitchen/aproned young and lovely wanting my baby/ and so happy about me she burns the roast beef" (55–57). Idealizing marriage and fatherhood initially, Corso’s speaker embraces reality in the second half of the poem admitting, “No, I doubt I’d be that kind of father” (84). Recognizing that the act of marriage is in itself a form of imprisonment, “No, can’t imagine myself married to that pleasant prison dream” (103), Corso’s speaker acknowledges in the end that the possibility of marriage is not promising for him. Bruce Cook from the book The Beat Generation illuminates Corso’s skill at juxtaposing humor and serious critical commentary, “Yet as funny and entertaining as all this certainly is, it is not merely that, for in its zany way ‘Marriage’ offers serious criticism of what is phony about a sacred American institution.” Corso’s sometimes surreal word mash-ups—"forked clarinets," “Flash Gordon soap,” “werewolf bathtubs”—caught the attention of many. It was “Bomb” and “Marriage” that caught the eye of a young Bob Dylan, still in Minnesota. Dylan said, “The Gregory Corso poem 'Bomb’ was more to the point and touched the spirit of the times better—a wasted world and totally mechanized—a lot of hustle and bustle—a lot of shelves to clean, boxes to stack. I wasn’t going to pin my hopes on that.” The poem “Bomb” created controversy because Corso mixed humor and politics. The poem was initially misinterpreted by many as being supportive of nuclear war. The opening lines of the poem tend to lead the reader to believe that Corso supported the bomb. He writes, "You Bomb /Toy of universe Grandest of all snatched-sky I cannot hate you [extra spaces Corso’s]" (lines 2–3). The speaker goes on to state that he cannot hate the bomb just as he cannot hate other instruments of violence, such as clubs, daggers, and St. Michael’s burning sword. He continues on to point out that people would rather die by any other means including the electric chair, but death is death no matter how it happens. The poem moves on to other death imagery and at time becomes a prayer to the bomb. The speaker offers to bring mythological roses, a gesture that evokes an image of a suitor at the door. The other suitors courting the bomb include Oppenheimer and Einstein, scientists who are responsible for the creation of the bomb. He concludes the poem with the idea that more bombs will be made "and they’ll sit plunk on earth’s grumpy empires/ fierce with moustaches of gold" (lines 87–8). Christine Hoff Kraemer states the idea succinctly, “The bomb is a reality; death is a reality, and for Corso, the only reasonable reaction is to embrace, celebrate, and laugh with the resulting chaos” (212). Kraemer also asserts, “Corso gives the reader only one clue to interpreting this mishmash of images: the association of disparate objects is always presented in conjunction with the exploding bomb” (214). In addition she points to Corso’s denial that the poem contained political significance. In contrast to Corso’s use of marriage as a synecdoche for a Beat view of women, postmodern feminist poet Hedwig Gorski chronicles a night with Corso in her poem “Could not get Gregory Corso out of my Car” (1985, Austin, Texas) showing the womanizing typical for heterosexual Beat behavior. Gorski criticizes the Beat movement for tokenism towards women writers and their work, with very few exceptions, including Anne Waldman, and post-beats like Diane DiPrima and herself. Male domination and womanizing by its heterosexual members, along with tokenism by its major homosexual members characterize the Beat Literary Movement. Beats scoffed at the Feminist Movement which offered liberalizing social and professional views of women and their works as did the Beat Movement for men, especially homosexuals. Corso however always defended women’s role in the Beat Generation, often citing his lover, Hope Savage, as a primary influence on him and Allen Ginsberg. Ted Morgan described Corso’s place in the beat literary world: “If Ginsberg, Kerouac and Burroughs were the Three Musketeers of the movement, Corso was their D’Artagnan, a sort of junior partner, accepted and appreciated, but with less than complete parity. He had not been in at the start, which was the alliance of the Columbia intellectuals with the Times Square hipsters. He was a recent adherent, although his credentials were impressive enough to gain him unrestricted admittance ...” It has taken 50 years and the death of the other Beats, for Corso to be fully appreciated as a poet of equal stature and significance. Later years In later years, Corso disliked public appearances and became irritated with his own “Beat” celebrity. He never allowed a biographer to work in any “authorized” fashion, and only posthumously was a volume of letters published under the specious artifice of An Accidental Autobiography. He did, however, agree to allow filmmaker Gustave Reininger to make a cinema vérité documentary, Corso: The Last Beat, about him. Corso had a cameo appearance in The Godfather III where he plays an outraged stockholder trying to speak at a meeting. After Allen Ginsberg’s death, Corso was depressed and despondent. Gustave Reininger convinced him to go “on the road” to Europe and retrace the early days of “the Beats” in Paris, Italy and Greece. While in Venice, Corso expressed on film his lifelong concerns about not having a mother and living such an uprooted childhood. Corso became curious about where in Italy his mother, Michelina Colonna, might be buried. His father’s family had always told him that his mother had returned to Italy a disgraced woman, a whore. Filmmaker Gustave Reininger quietly launched a search for Corso’s mother’s Italian burial place. In an astonishing turn of events, Reininger found Corso’s mother Michelina not dead, but alive; and not in Italy, but in Trenton, New Jersey. Corso was reunited with his mother on film. He discovered that she at the age of 17 had been almost fatally brutalized (all her front teeth punched out) and was sexually abused by her teenage husband, his father. On film, Michelina explained that, at the height of the Depression, with no trade or job, she had no choice but to give her son into the care of Catholic Charities. After she had established a new life working in a restaurant in New Jersey, she had attempted to find him, to no avail. The father, Sam Corso, had blocked even Catholic Charities from disclosing the boy’s whereabouts. Living modestly, she lacked the means to hire a lawyer to find her son. She worked as a waitress in a sandwich shop in the New Jersey State Office Building in Trenton. She eventually married the cook, Paul Davita, and started a new family. Her child Gregory remained a secret between Michelina and her mother and sisters, until Reininger found them. Corso and his mother quickly developed a relationship which lasted until his death, which preceded hers. They both spent hours on the phone, and the initial forgiveness displayed in the film became a living reality. Corso and Michelina loved to gamble and on several occasions took vacations to Atlantic City for blackjack at the casinos. Corso always lost, while Michelina fared better and would stake him with her winnings. Corso claimed that he was healed in many ways by meeting his mother and saw his life coming full circle. He began to work productively on a new, long-delayed volume of poetry, The Golden Egg. Shortly thereafter, Corso discovered he had irreversible prostate cancer. He died of the disease in Minnesota on January 17, 2001. Around two hundred people were present in the so-called “English Cemetery” in Rome, Italy, on Saturday morning, May 5, to pay their last respects to Gregory Corso. The poet’s ashes were buried in a tomb precisely in front of the grave of his great colleague Shelley, and not far from the one of John Keats. In the tranquillity of this small and lovely cemetery, full of trees, flowers and well-fed cats, with the sun’s complicity, more than a funeral, it seemed to be a reunion of long-lost friends, with tales, anecdotes, laughter and poetry readings. The urn bearing Corso’s ashes arrived with his daughter Sheri Langerman who had assisted him during the last seven months of his life. Twelve other Americans came with her, among them Corso’s old friends Roger Richards and the lawyer Robert Yarra. The cemetery had been closed to newcomers since the mid-century and Robert Yarra and Hannelore deLellis made it possible for Corso to be buried there. (Corso was a Catholic and the cemetery was strictly Protestant, but an exception was made for Corso.) His ashes were deposited at the foot of the grave of poet Percy Bysshe Shelley in the Cimitero Acattolico, the Protestant Cemetery, Rome. He wrote his own epitaph: Spirit is Life It flows thru the death of me endlessly like a river unafraid of becoming the sea Quotes “…a tough young kid from the Lower East Side who rose like an angel over the roof tops and sang Italian song as sweet as Caruso and Sinatra, but in words.… Amazing and beautiful, Gregory Corso, the one and only Gregory, the Herald."—Jack Kerouac– Introduction to Gasoline “Corso’s a poet’s Poet, a poet much superior to me. Pure velvet... whose wild fame’s extended for decades around the world from France to China, World Poet.—Allen Ginsberg, ”On Corso’s Virtues” “Gregory’s voice echoes through a precarious future.... His vitality and resilience always shine through, with a light that is more than human: the immortal light of his Muse.... Gregory is indeed one of the Daddies.”—William S. Burroughs “The most important of the beat poets... a really true poet with an original voice”—Nancy Peters, editor of City Lights “Other than Mr. Corso, Gregory was all you ever needed to know. He defined the name by his every word or act. Always succinct, he never tried. Once he called you 'My Ira’ or 'My Janine’ or ‘My Allen,’ he was forever 'Your Gregory’.”—Ira Cohen “...It comes, I tell you, immense with gasolined rags and bits of wire and old bent nails, a dark arriviste, from a dark river within.”– Gregory Corso, How Poetry Comes to Me (epigraph of Gasoline) “They, that unnamed ”they", they’ve knocked me down but I got up. I always get up-and I swear when I went down quite often I took the fall; nothing moves a mountain but itself. They, I’ve long ago named them me."– Gregory Corso Bibliography * The Vestal Lady and Other Poems (1955, poetry) * This Hung-Up Age (1955, play) * Gasoline (1958, poetry) * Bomb (1958, poetry) * The Happy Birthday of Death (1960, poetry) * Minutes to Go (1960, visual poetry) with Sinclair Beiles, William S. Burroughs, and Brion Gysin. * The American Express (1961, novel) * Long Live Man (1962, poetry) * There is Yet Time to Run Back through Life and Expiate All That’s been Sadly Done (1965, poetry) * Elegiac Feelings American (1970, poetry) * The Night Last Night was at its Nightest (1972, poetry) * Earth Egg (1974, poetry) * Writings from OX (1979, with interview by Michael Andre) * Herald of the Autochthonic Spirit (1981, poetry) * Mind Field (1989, poetry) * Mindfield: New and Selected Poems (1989, poetry) * King Of The Hill: with Nicholas Tremulis (1993, album)[16] * Bloody Show: with Nicholas Tremulis (1996, album)[17] * The Whole Shot: Collected Interviews with Gregory Corso (2015) * Sarpedon: A Play by Gregory Corso (1954) (2016) References Wikipedia—https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gregory_Corso

George Chapman (Hitchin, Hertfordshire, C. 1559– London,12 May 1634) was an English dramatist, translator, and poet. He was a classical scholar whose work shows the influence of Stoicism. Chapman has been identified as the Rival Poet of Shakespeare’s sonnets by William Minto, and as an anticipator of the Metaphysical Poets of the 17th century. Chapman is best remembered for his translations of Homer’s Iliad and Odyssey, and the Homeric Batrachomyomachia. Life and work Chapman was born at Hitchin in Hertfordshire. There is conjecture that he studied at Oxford but did not take a degree, though no reliable evidence affirms this. Very little is known about Chapman’s early life, but Mark Eccles uncovered records that reveal much about Chapman’s difficulties and expectations. In 1585 Chapman was approached in a friendly fashion by John Wolfall, Sr., who offered to supply a bond of surety for a loan to furnish Chapman money “for his proper use in Attendance upon the then Right Honorable Sir Rafe Sadler Knight.” Chapman’s courtly ambitions led him into a trap. He apparently never received any money, but he would be plagued for many years by the papers he had signed. Wolfall had the poet arrested for debt in 1600, and when in 1608 Wolfall’s son, having inherited his father’s papers, sued yet again, Chapman’s only resort was to petition the Court of Chancery for equity. As Sadler died in 1587, this gives Chapman little time to have trained under him. It seems more likely that he was in Sadler’s household from 1577–83, as he dedicates all his Homerical translations to him. Chapman spent the early 1590s abroad, and saw military action in the Low Countries fighting under renowned English general Sir Francis Vere. His earliest published works were the obscure philosophical poems The Shadow of Night (1594) and Ovid’s Banquet of Sense (1595). The latter has been taken as a response to the erotic poems of the age, such as Philip Sidney’s Astrophil and Stella and Shakespeare’s Venus and Adonis. Chapman’s life was troubled by debt and his inability to find a patron whose fortunes did not decline: Robert Devereux, Second Earl of Essex and the Prince of Wales, Prince Henry both met their ends prematurely. The former was executed for treason by Elizabeth I in 1601, and the latter died of typhoid fever at the age of eighteen in 1612. Chapman’s resultant poverty did not diminish his ability or his standing among his fellow Elizabethan poets and dramatists. Chapman died in London, having lived his latter years in poverty and debt. He was buried at St Giles in the Fields. A monument to him designed by Inigo Jones marked his tomb, and stands today inside the church. Plays Comedies By the end of the 1590s, Chapman had become a successful playwright, working for Philip Henslowe and later for the Children of the Chapel. Among his comedies are The Blind Beggar of Alexandria (1596; printed 1598), An Humorous Day’s Mirth (1597; printed 1599), All Fools (printed 1605), Monsieur D’Olive (1605; printed 1606), The Gentleman Usher (printed 1606), May Day (printed 1611), and The Widow’s Tears (printed 1612). His plays show a willingness to experiment with dramatic form: An Humorous Day’s Mirth was one of the first plays to be written in the style of “humours comedy” which Ben Jonson later used in Every Man in his Humour and Every Man Out of his Humour. With The Widow’s Tears, he was also one of the first writers to meld comedy with more serious themes, creating the tragicomedy later made famous by Beaumont and Fletcher. He also wrote one noteworthy play in collaboration. Eastward Ho (1605), written with Jonson and John Marston, contained satirical references to the Scots which landed Chapman and Jonson in jail. Various of their letters to the king and noblemen survive in a manuscript in the Folger Library known as the Dobell MS, and published by AR Braunmuller as A Seventeenth Century Letterbook. In the letters, both men renounced the offending line, implying that Marston was responsible for the injurious remark. Jonson’s “Conversations With Drummond” refers to the imprisonment, and suggests there was a possibility that both authors would have their “ears and noses slit” as a punishment, but this may have been Jonson elaborating on the story in retrospect. Chapman’s friendship with Jonson broke down, perhaps as a result of Jonson’s public feud with Inigo Jones. Some satiric, scathing lines, written sometime after the burning of Jonson’s desk and papers, provide evidence of the rift. The poem lampooning Jonson’s aggressive behaviour and self-believed superiority remained unpublished during Chapman’s lifetime; it was found in documents collected after his death. Tragedies Chapman’s greatest tragedies took their subject matter from recent French history, the French ambassador taking offence on at least one occasion. These include Bussy D’Ambois (1607), The Conspiracy and Tragedy of Charles, Duke of Byron (1608), The Revenge of Bussy D’Ambois (1613) and The Tragedy of Chabot, Admiral of France (published 1639). The two Byron plays were banned from the stage—although, when the Court left London, the plays were performed in their original and unexpurgated forms by the Children of the Chapel. The French ambassador probably took offence to a scene which portrays Henry IV’s wife and mistress arguing and physically fighting. On publication, the offending material was excised, and Chapman refers to the play in his dedication to Sir Thomas Walsingham as “poore dismembered Poems.” His only work of classical tragedy, Caesar and Pompey (ca. 1613?) is generally regarded as his most modest achievement in the genre. Other plays Chapman wrote one of the most successful masques of the Jacobean era, The Memorable Masque of the Middle Temple and Lincoln’s Inn, performed on 15 February 1613. According to Kenneth Muir, The Masque of the Twelve Months, performed on Twelfth Night 1619 and first printed by John Payne Collier in 1848 with no author’s name attached, is also ascribed to Chapman. Chapman’s authorship has been argued in connection with a number of other anonymous plays of his era. F. G. Fleay proposed that his first play was The Disguises. He has been put forward as the author, in whole or in part, of Sir Giles Goosecap, Two Wise Men And All The Rest Fools, The Fountain Of New Fashions, and The Second Maiden’s Tragedy. Of these, only 'Sir Gyles Goosecap’ is generally accepted by scholars to have been written by Chapman (The Plays of George Chapman: The Tragedies, with Sir Giles Goosecap, edited by Allan Holaday, University of Illinois Press, 1987). In 1654, bookseller Richard Marriot published the play Revenge for Honour as the work of Chapman. Scholars have rejected the attribution; the play may have been written by Henry Glapthorne. Alphonsus Emperor of Germany (also printed 1654) is generally considered another false Chapman attribution. The lost plays The Fatal Love and A Yorkshire Gentlewoman And Her Son were assigned to Chapman in Stationers’ Register entries in 1660. Both of these plays were among the ones destroyed in the famous kitchen burnings by John Warburton’s cook. The lost play Christianetta (registered 1640) may have been a collaboration between Chapman and Richard Brome, or a revision by Brome of a Chapman work. Poet and translator Other poems by Chapman include: De Guiana, Carmen Epicum (1596), on the exploits of Sir Walter Raleigh; a continuation of Christopher Marlowe’s unfinished Hero and Leander (1598); and Euthymiae Raptus; or the Tears of Peace (1609). Some have considered Chapman to be the “rival poet” of Shakespeare’s Sonnets. From 1598 he published his translation of the Iliad in installments. In 1616 the complete Iliad and Odyssey appeared in The Whole Works of Homer, the first complete English translation, which until Pope’s was the most popular in the English language and was the way most English speakers encountered these poems. The endeavour was to have been profitable: his patron, Prince Henry, had promised him £300 on its completion plus a pension. However, Henry died in 1612 and his household neglected the commitment, leaving Chapman without either a patron or an income. In an extant letter, Chapman petitions for the money owed him; his petition was ineffective. Chapman’s translation of the Odyssey is written in iambic pentameter, whereas his Iliad is written in iambic heptameter. (The Greek original is in dactylic hexameter.) Chapman often extends and elaborates on Homer’s original contents to add descriptive detail or moral and philosophical interpretation and emphasis. Chapman’s translation of Homer was much admired by John Keats, notably in his famous poem On First Looking into Chapman’s Homer, and also drew attention from Samuel Taylor Coleridge and T. S. Eliot. Chapman also translated the Homeric Hymns, the Georgics of Virgil, The Works of Hesiod (1618, dedicated to Francis Bacon), the Hero and Leander of Musaeus (1618), and the Fifth Satire of Juvenal (1624). Chapman’s poetry, though not widely influential on the subsequent development of English poetry, did have a noteworthy effect on the work of T. S. Eliot. Homage In Percy Bysshe Shelley’s poem The Revolt of Islam, Shelley quotes a verse of Chapman’s as homage within his dedication "to Mary__ __", presumably his wife Mary Shelley: There is no danger to a man, that knows What life and death is: there's not any law Exceeds his knowledge; neither is it lawful That he should stoop to any other law. The Irish playwright Oscar Wilde quoted the same verse in his part fiction, part literary criticism, “The Portrait of Mr. W.H.”. The English poet John Keats wrote “On First Looking into Chapman’s Homer” for his friend Charles Cowden Clarke in October 1816. The poem begins “Much have I travell’d in the realms of gold” and is much quoted. For example, P. G. Wodehouse in his review of the first novel of The Flashman Papers series that came to his attention: “Now I understand what that 'when a new planet swims into his ken’ excitement is all about.” Arthur Ransome uses two references from it in his children’s books, the Swallows and Amazons series. Quotes From All Fooles, II.1.170-178, by George Chapman: I could have written as good prose and verse As the most beggarly poet of 'em all, Either Accrostique, Exordion, Epithalamions, Satyres, Epigrams, Sonnets in Doozens, or your Quatorzanies, In any rhyme, Masculine, Feminine, Or Sdrucciola, or cooplets, Blancke Verse: Y'are but bench-whistlers now a dayes to them That were in our times.... References Wikipedia—https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/George_Chapman

James Dennis "Jim" Carroll (August 1, 1949 – September 11, 2009) was an American author, poet, autobiographer, and punk musician. Carroll was best known for his 1978 autobiographical work The Basketball Diaries, which was made into the 1995 film of the same name, starring Leonardo DiCaprio as Carroll. Carroll was born to a working-class family of Irish descent, and grew up on New York City's Lower East Side. When he was about eleven (in the sixth grade) his family moved north to Inwood in Upper Manhattan where he attended Good Shepherd School. He was taught by the LaSalle Christian Brothers, and his brother in the sixth grade noted that he could write and encouraged him to do so. In fall 1963, he entered public school, but was soon awarded a scholarship to the elite Trinity School. He attended Trinity from 1964–1968. Apart from being interested in writing, Carroll was an all-star basketball player throughout his grade school and high school career. He entered the "Biddy League" at age 13 and participated in the National High School All Star Game in 1966. During this time, Carroll was living a double life as a heroin addict who prostituted himself to afford his habit but he was also writing poems and attending poetry workshops at St. Mark's Poetry Project. He briefly attended Wagner College and Columbia University. Literary career While still in high school, Carroll published his first collection of poems, Organic Trains. Already attracting the attention of the local literati, his work began appearing in the Poetry Project's magazine The World in 1967. Soon his work was being published in elite literary magazines like Paris Review in 1968, and Poetry the following year. In 1970, his second collection of poems, 4 Ups and 1 Down was published, and he started working for Andy Warhol. At first, he was writing film dialogue and inventing character names; later on, Carroll worked as the co-manager of Warhol's Theater. Carroll's first publication by a mainstream publisher (Grossman Publishers), the poetry collection Living at the Movies, was published in 1973. In 1978, Carroll published The Basketball Diaries, an autobiographical book concerning his life as a teenager in New York City's hard drug culture. Diaries is an edited collection of the diaries he kept between the ages of twelve and sixteen, detailing his sexual experiences, high school basketball career, and his addiction to heroin, which began when he was 13. In 1987, Carroll wrote a second memoir entitled Forced Entries: The Downtown Diaries 1971–1973, continuing his autobiography into his early adulthood in the New York City music and art scene as well as his struggle to kick his drug habit. After working as a musician, Carroll returned to writing full-time in the mid-1980s and began to appear regularly on the spoken word circuit. Starting in 1991, Carroll performed readings from his then-in-progress first novel, The Petting Zoo. Music career In 1978, after he moved to California to get a fresh start since kicking his heroin addiction, Carroll formed The Jim Carroll Band, a New Wave/punk rock group, with encouragement from Patti Smith, with whom he once shared an apartment in New York City, along with Robert Mapplethorpe.[9] The band was originally called Amsterdam, and was based in the San Francisco Bay Area. The musicians were Steve Linsley (bass), Wayne Woods (drums), Brian Linsley and Terrell Winn (guitars). They released a single "People Who Died", from their 1980 debut album, Catholic Boy. The album featured contributions from Allen Lanier and Bobby Keys. In 1982 the song appeared in E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial, from which Carroll received royalties until his death in 2009. The song also appeared in the 1985 Kim Richards vehicle Tuff Turf starring James Spader and Robert Downey Jr., which also featured a cameo appearance by the band, as well as 2004's Dawn of the Dead. It was featured in the 1995 film The Basketball Diaries (based on Jim Carroll's autobiography), and was covered by John Cale on his Antártida soundtrack. A condensed, 2-minute, version of the song was made into an animated music video by Daniel D. Cooper, an independent filmmaker/animator, in 2010. The song's title was based on a poem by Ted Berrigan. Later albums were Dry Dreams (1982) and I Write Your Name (1983), both with contributions from Lenny Kaye and Paul Sanchez. Carroll also collaborated with musicians Lou Reed, Blue Öyster Cult, Boz Scaggs, Ray Manzarek of The Doors, Pearl Jam, Electric Light Orchestra and Rancid. Death Carroll, 60, died of a heart attack at his Manhattan home on September 11, 2009. He was reportedly working at his desk when he died. Poetry * Organic Trains (1967) * 4 Ups and 1 Down (1970) * Living at the Movies (1973) * The Book of Nods (1986) * Fear of Dreaming (1993) * Void of Course: Poems 1994–1997 (1998) ISBN 0-14-058909-0 Prose * The Basketball Diaries (1978) * Forced Entries: The Downtown Diaries 1971-1973 (1987) * The Petting Zoo (2010) References Wikipedia - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jim_Carroll

William Collins (25 December 1721– 12 June 1759) was an English poet. Second in influence only to Thomas Gray, he was an important poet of the middle decades of the 18th century. His lyrical odes mark a turn away from the Augustan poetry of Alexander Pope’s generation and towards the Romantic era which would soon follow. Biography Born in Chichester, Sussex, the son of a hatmaker and former mayor of the town, he was educated at The Prebendal School, Winchester and Magdalen College, Oxford. While still at the university, he published the Persian Eclogues (1742) which he had begun at school. After graduating in 1743 he was undecided about his future. Failing to obtain a university fellowship, being judged by a military uncle as 'too indolent even for the army’, and having rejected the idea of becoming a clergyman, he settled for a literary career and was supported in London by a small allowance from his cousin, George Payne. There he was befriended by James Thomson and Dr Johnson as well as the actors David Garrick and Samuel Foote. In 1747 he published his collection of Odes on Several Descriptive and Allegorical Subjects on which his subsequent reputation was to rest. The poems are characterized by strong emotional descriptions and the personal relationship to the subject allowed by the ode form. At the time little notice was taken of these poems, which were at odds with the Augustan spirit of the age. With the depression on his lack of success, aggravated by drunkenness, he sank into insanity and in 1754 was confined to McDonald’s Madhouse in Chelsea. From there he moved to the care of a married elder sister in Chichester until his death in 1759, when he was buried in St Andrew’s Church. After the Odes, although he had many projects in his head, none came to fruition. His only other poems were the ode written on Thomson’s death (1749) and the posthumously discovered and unfinished “Ode on the popular superstitions of the Highlands of Scotland”. An intriguing addition, now lost, is the “Ode on the Music of the Grecian Theatre” that he described and proposed sending to the musician William Hayes in 1750. Hayes had just set “The Passions” by Collins to music as an oratorio that was received with some acclaim. This, coupled with the popularity of the Persian Eclogues, a revised version of which was published the year he died, was the closest approach to success that Collins knew. Legacy Following his death, his poems were issued in a collected edition by John Langhorne (1765) and slowly gained more recognition, although never without criticism. While Dr Johnson wrote a sympathetic account of his former friend in Lives of the Poets (1781), he dismissed the poetry as contrived and poorly executed. Charles Dickens was dismissive for other reasons in his novel Great Expectations. There Pip describes his youthful admiration for a recitation of Collins’s The Passions and comments ruefully, 'I particularly venerated Mr. Wopsle as Revenge throwing his blood-stain’d Sword in Thunder down, and taking the War-denouncing Trumpet with a withering Look. It was not with me then, as it was in later life, when I fell into the society of the Passions and compared them with Collins and Wopsle, rather to the disadvantage of both gentlemen’. Works * Persian Eclogues (1742); these were revised as Oriental Eclogues in 1759. * Verses humbly address’d to Sir Thomas Hanmer on his edition of Shakespeare’s works (1743); republished in a revised edition in 1744, in which “A Song from Shakespeare’s Cymbeline” was included. * Odes on Several Descriptive and Allegorical Subjects (1746) * Ode on the Death of Thomson (1749) * Ode on the Popular Superstitions of the Highlands (written 1750, unpublished until later editions) Editions * Poetical works of William Collins, ed. John Langhorne, originally published in 1765; several editions followed, to which Dr Johnson’s life of Collins was added. * A scholarly edition was published in The Poetical Works of Gray and Collins (ed. Austin Poole) by Oxford University Press in 1926; from the same press there followed the definitive edition of The Works of William Collins (ed. Wendorf & Ryskamp) in 1979. References Wikipedia—https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/William_Collins_(poet)

Thomas Campion (sometimes Campian) (12 February 1567 – 1 March 1620) was an English composer, poet, and physician. He wrote over a hundred lute songs, masques for dancing, and an authoritative technical treatise on music. Life Campion was born in London, the son of John Campion, a clerk of the Court of Chancery, and Lucy (née Searle– daughter of Laurence Searle, one of the queen’s serjeants-at-arms). Upon the death of Campion’s father in 1576, his mother married Augustine Steward, dying soon afterwards. His stepfather assumed charge of the boy and sent him, in 1581, to study at Peterhouse, Cambridge as a “gentleman pensioner”; he left the university after four years without taking a degree. He later entered Gray’s Inn to study law in 1586. However, he left in 1595 without having been called to the bar. On 10 February 1605, he received his medical degree from the University of Caen. Campion is thought to have lived in London, practising as a physician, until his death in March 1620– possibly of the plague. He was apparently unmarried and had no children. He was buried the same day at St Dunstan-in-the-West in Fleet Street. He was implicated in the murder of Sir Thomas Overbury, but was eventually exonerated, as it was found that he had unwittingly delivered the bribe that had procured Overbury’s death. Poetry and songs The body of his works is considerable, the earliest known being a group of five anonymous poems included in the “Songs of Divers Noblemen and Gentlemen,” appended to Newman’s edition of Sir Philip Sidney’s Astrophel and Stella, which appeared in 1591. In 1595, Poemata, a collection of Latin panegyrics, elegies and epigrams was published, winning him a considerable reputation. This was followed, in 1601, by a songbook, A Booke of Ayres, with words by himself and music composed by himself and Philip Rosseter. The following year he published his Observations in the Art of English Poesie, “against the vulgar and unartificial custom of riming,” in favour of rhymeless verse on the model of classical quantitative verse. Campion’s theories on poetry were demolished by Samuel Daniel in “Defence of Rhyme” (1603). In 1607, he wrote and published a masque for the occasion of the marriage of Lord Hayes, and, in 1613, issued a volume of Songs of Mourning: Bewailing the Untimely Death of Prince Henry, set to music by John Cooper (also known as Coperario). The same year he wrote and arranged three masques: The Lords’ Masque for the marriage of Princess Elizabeth; an entertainment for the amusement of Queen Anne at Caversham House; and a third for the marriage of the Earl of Somerset to the infamous Frances Howard, Countess of Essex. If, moreover, as appears quite likely, his Two Bookes of Ayres (both words and music written by himself) belongs also to this year, it was indeed his annus mirabilis. In 1615, he published a book on counterpoint, A New Way of Making Fowre Parts in Counterpoint By a Most Familiar and Infallible Rule, a technical treatise which was for many years the standard textbook on the subject. It was included, with annotations by Christopher Sympson, in Playford’s Brief Introduction to the Skill of Musick, and two editions appear to have been published by 1660. Some time in or after 1617 appeared his Third and Fourth Booke of Ayres. In 1618 appeared the airs that were sung and played at Brougham Castle on the occasion of the King’s entertainment there, the music by George Mason and John Earsden, while the words were almost certainly by Campion. In 1619, he published his Epigrammatum Libri II. Umbra Elegiarum liber unus, a reprint of his 1595 collection with considerable omissions, additions (in the form of another book of epigrams) and corrections. Legacy Campion made a nuncupative will on 1 March 1619/20 before 'divers credible witnesses’: a memorandum was made that he did 'not longe before his death say that he did give all that he had unto Mr Phillip Rosseter, and wished that his estate had bin farre more’, and Rosseter was sworn before Dr Edmund Pope to administer as principal legatee on 3 March 1619/20. While Campion had attained a considerable reputation in his own day, in the years that followed his death his works sank into complete oblivion. No doubt this was due to the nature of the media in which he mainly worked, the masque and the song-book. The masque was an amusement at any time too costly to be popular, and during the commonwealth period it was practically extinguished. The vogue of the song-books was even more ephemeral, and, as in the case of the masque, the Puritan ascendancy, with its distaste for all secular music, effectively put an end to the madrigal. Its loss involved that of many hundreds of dainty lyrics, including those of Campion, and it was due to the work of A. H. Bullen (see bibliography), who first published a collection of the poet’s works in 1889, that his genius was recognised and his place among the foremost rank of Elizabethan lyric poets restored. Campion set little store by his English lyrics; they were to him “the superfluous blossoms of his deeper studies,” but we may thank the fates that his ideas on rhymeless versification so little affected his work. His rhymeless experiments are certainly better conceived than many others, but they lack the spontaneous grace and freshness of his other poetry, while the whole scheme was, of course, unnatural. He must have possessed a very delicate musical ear, for not one of his songs is unmusical; moreover, his ability to compose both words and music gave rise to a metrical fluidity which is one of his most characteristic features. Rarely are his rhythms uniform, while they frequently shift from line to line. His range was very great both in feeling and expression, and whether he attempts an elaborate epithalamium or a simple country ditty, the result is always full of unstudied freshness and tuneful charm. In some of his sacred pieces, he is particularly successful, combining real poetry with genuine religious fervour. Some of Campion’s works could also be quite ribald– such as “Beauty, since you so much desire”. Early dictionary writers, such as Fétis, saw Campion as a theorist. It was much later on that people began to see him as a composer. He was the writer of a poem, Cherry Ripe, which is not the later famous poem of that title but has several similarities. In popular culture Repeated reference was made to Campion in an October 2010 episode of the BBC TV series, James May’s Man Lab (BBC2), where his works are used as the inspiration for a young man trying to serenade a female colleague. This segment was referenced in the second and third series of the programme as well. Occasional mention is made of Campion ("Campian") in the comic strip 9 Chickweed Lane (i.e., 5 April 2004), referencing historical context for playing the lute. References Wikipedia—https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thomas_Campion

Cid (Sidney) Corman (June 29, 1924 – March 12, 2004) was an American poet, translator and editor, most notably of Origin, who was a key figure in the history of American poetry in the second half of the 20th century. Corman was born in Boston's Roxbury neighborhood and grew up nearby in the Dorchester neighborhood. His parents were both from the Ukraine. From an early age he was an avid reader and showed an aptitude for drawing and calligraphy. He attended Boston Latin School and in 1941 he entered Tufts University, where he achieved Phi Beta Kappa honors and wrote his first poems. He was excused from service in World War II for medical reasons and graduated in 1945.

Thomas Carew (pronounced as “Carey”) (1595 – 22 March 1640) was an English poet, among the ‘Cavalier’ group of Caroline poets. Biography He was the son of Sir Matthew Carew, master in chancery, and his wife Alice, daughter of Sir John Rivers, Lord Mayor of the City of London and widow of Ingpen. The poet was probably the third of the eleven children of his parents, and was born in West Wickham in London, in the early part of 1595; he was thirteen years old in June 1608, when he matriculated at Merton College, Oxford. He took his degree of B.A. early in 1611 and proceeded to study at the Middle Temple. Two years later his father complained to Sir Dudley Carleton that he was not doing well. He was therefore sent to Italy as a member of Sir Dudley’s household and, when the ambassador returned from Venice, he seems to have kept Thomas Carew with him, for he was working as secretary to Carleton, at the Hague, early in 1616. However, he was dismissed in the autumn of that year for levity and slander; he had great difficulty in finding another job. In August 1618 his father died and Carew entered the service of Edward Herbert, Baron Herbert of Cherbury, in whose train he travelled to France in March 1619, and it is believed that he remained with Herbert until his return to England, at the close of his diplomatic missions, in April 1624. Carew “followed the court before he was of it,” not receiving the definite commitment of the Chamber until 1628. According to a probably apocryphal story, while Carew held this office he displayed his tact and presence of mind by stumbling and extinguishing the candle he was holding to light Charles I into the queen’s chamber, because he saw that Lord St Albans had his arm round her majesty’s neck. The king suspected nothing, and the queen heaped favours on the poet. Probably in 1630 Carew was made “server” or taster-in-ordinary to the king. To this period may be attributed his close friendships with Sir John Suckling, Ben Jonson and Edward Hyde, 1st Earl of Clarendon; the latter described Carew as “a person of pleasant and facetious wit.” John Donne, whose celebrity as a court-preacher lasted until his death in 1631, exercised a powerful if not entirely healthy influence over the genius of Carew. In February 1633 a masque by the latter, Coelum Britanicum, was acted in the Banqueting House at Whitehall, and was printed in 1634. The close of Carew’s life is absolutely obscure. It was long supposed that he died in 1639, and this has been thought to be confirmed by the fact that the first edition of his Poems, published in 1640, seems to have a posthumous character. But Clarendon tells us that “after fifty years of life spent with less severity and exactness than it ought to have been, he died with the greatest remorse for that licence”. If Carew was more than fifty years of age, he must have died during or after 1645, and in fact there were final additions made to his Poems in the third edition of 1651. Walton tells us that Carew in his last illness, being afflicted with the horrors, sent in great haste to “the ever-memorable” John Hales (1584–1656); Hales “told him he should have his prayers, but would by no means give him then either the sacrament or absolution.” Assessment Carew’s poems are sensuous lyrics. They open to us, in his own phrase, “a mine of rich and pregnant fancy.” His metrical style was influenced by Jonson and his imagery by Donne, for whom he had an almost servile admiration. Carew had a lucidity and directness of lyrical utterance unknown to Donne. It is perhaps his greatest distinction that he is the earliest of the Cavalier song-writers by profession, of whom John Wilmot, Earl of Rochester, was a later example, poets who turned the disreputable incidents of an idle court-life into poetry which was often of the rarest delicacy and the purest melody and colour. The longest of Carew’s poems, “A Rapture,” would be more widely appreciated if the rich flow of its imagination were restrained by greater reticence of taste. A testimonial to his posterity is that he was analyzed by 19th century critics such as Charles Neaves, who even two centuries later found Carew on the sensuous border of propriety. Critical reception Carew has long been recognized as a notable figure in English literary history. His earliest critics—chiefly other poets—evidently knew his work from the many manuscripts that circulated. Among many others, two of the most celebrated writers of the age, Sir John Suckling and William Davenant, paid tribute to Carew, playfully admiring his poetic craftsmanship. Carew’s reputation, however, experienced a slow but steady decline during the second half of the seventeenth century. Despite some interest in Carew in subsequent years, not until the twentieth century did critics offer a reexamination of Carew’s place in English literary history. F. R. Leavis wrote in 1936: “Carew, it seems to me, has claims to more distinction than he is commonly accorded; more than he is accorded by the bracket that, in common acceptance, links him with Lovelace and Suckling.” More recently, Carew’s place among the Cavalier Poets has been examined, as have his poetic affinities with Ben Jonson and John Donne; “A Rapture” has been scrutinized as both biography and fantasy; the funerary poetry has been studied as a subgenre; evidence of Carew’s views concerning political hierarchy has been found in his occasional verse; and love and courtship have been probed as themes in the “Celia” poems. By the end of the twentieth century, Carew has been recognized as an important poet representative of his time and a master lyricist. According to Edmund Gosse, “Carew’s poems, at their best, are brilliant lyrics of the purely sensuous order.” Major poetry Poems. By Thomas Carew, Esquire is a collection of lyrics, songs, pastorals, poetic dialogues, elegies, addresses, and occasional poems. Most of the pieces are fairly short—the longest, “A Rapture,” is 166 lines, and well over half are under 50 lines. The subjects are various: a number of poems treat love, lovemaking, and feminine beauty. Several of the poems, including “An Elegie upon the death of the Deane of Pauls, Dr. Iohn Donne” are memorial tributes; others, notably “To Saxham,” celebrate country-house life; and a few record such events as the successful production of a play ("To my worthy Friend, M. D’Avenant, upon his Excellent Play, The Iust Italian") or the marriage of friends ("On the Marriage of T. K. and C. C. the Morning Stormie"). Many of the songs and love poems are addressed to the still-unidentified “Celia,” a woman who was evidently Carew’s lover for years. The poems to Celia treat the urgency of courtship, making much of the carpe diem theme. Others commend Celia through simile, conceit, and cliché. The physical pleasures of love are likewise celebrated: “A Rapture” graphically documents a sexual encounter through analogy, euphemism, and paradox, while “Loves Courtship” responds to the early passing of virginity. A number of Carew’s poems are concerned with the nature of poetry itself. His elegy on John Donne has been praised as both a masterpiece of criticism and a remarkably perceptive analysis of the metaphysical qualities of Donne’s literary work. English poet and playwright Ben Jonson is the subject of another piece of critical verse, “To Ben. Iohnson, Upon Occasion of His Ode of Defiance Annext to His Play of The New Inne.” This poem, like the elegy on Donne, is concerned with both the style and substance of the author’s literary works as well as with personal qualities of the author himself. Among Carew’s occasional, public verse are his addresses to ladies of fashion, commendations of the nobility, and laments for the passing of friends or public figures, such as Gustavus Adolphus, King of Sweden. Bibliography * Thomas Carew (1810). A selection from the poetical works of Thomas Carew [ed. by J. Fry.]. * Thomas Carew (1824). The works of Thomas Carew: reprinted from the original edition of MDCXL (1640). Printed for W. and C. Tait. * Thomas Carew (1870). The Poems of Thomas Carew: Sewer in Ordinary to Charles I. and a Gentleman of His Privy Chamber. Roxburghe Library. pp. 242–. * Thomas Carew (1893). The poems and masque of Thomas Carew...: With an introductory memoir, an appendix of unauthenticated poems from mss., notes, and a table of first lines. Reeves and Turner. References Wikipedia—https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thomas_Carew

Mary Elizabeth Coleridge (23 September 1861– 25 August 1907) was a British novelist and poet who also wrote essays and reviews. She taught at the London Working Women’s College for twelve years from 1895 to 1907. She wrote poetry under the pseudonym Anodos, taken from George MacDonald; other influences on her were Richard Watson Dixon and Christina Rossetti. Robert Bridges, the Poet Laureate, described her poems as ‘wonderously beautiful… but mystical rather and enigmatic’. She published five novels, the best known of those being The King with Two Faces.

Arthur Hugh Clough (1 January 1819 – 13 November 1861) was an English poet, an educationalist, and the devoted assistant to ground-breaking nurse Florence Nightingale. He was the brother of suffragist Anne Clough, who became principal of Newnham College, Cambridge. He was born in Liverpool to James Butler Clough, a cotton merchant of Welsh descent, and Anne Perfect, from Pontefract in Yorkshire. In 1822 the family moved to the United States, and Clough’s early childhood was spent mainly in Charleston, South Carolina. In 1828 Clough and his older brother Charles returned to England to attend school in Chester.

William Wilfred Campbell (15 June 1860– 1 January 1918) was a Canadian poet. He is often classed as one of the country’s Confederation Poets, a group that included fellow Canadians Charles G.D. Roberts, Bliss Carman, Archibald Lampman, and Duncan Campbell Scott; he was a colleague of Lampman and Scott. By the end of the 19th century, he was considered the “unofficial poet laureate of Canada.” Although not as well known as the other Confederation poets today, Campbell was a “versatile, interesting writer” who was influenced by Robert Burns, the English Romantics, Edgar Allan Poe, Ralph Waldo Emerson, Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, Thomas Carlyle, and Alfred Tennyson. Inspired by these writers, Campbell expressed his own religious idealism in traditional forms and genres.

Amy Clampitt (June 15, 1920– September 10, 1994) was an American poet and author. Life Amy Clampitt was born on June 15, 1920 of Quaker parents, and brought up in New Providence, Iowa. In the American Academy of Arts and Letters and at nearby Grinnell College she began a study of English literature that eventually led her to poetry. She graduated from Grinnell College, and from that time on lived mainly in New York City. To support herself, she worked as a secretary at the Oxford University Press, a reference librarian at the Audubon Society, and a freelance editor. Not until the mid-1960s, when she was in her forties, did she return to writing poetry. Her first poem was published by The New Yorker in 1978. In 1983, at the age of sixty-three, she published her first full-length collection, The Kingfisher. In the decade that followed, Clampitt published five books of poetry, including What the Light Was Like (1985), Archaic Figure (1987), and Westward (1990). Her last book, A Silence Opens, appeared in 1994. She also published a book of essays and several privately printed editions of her longer poems. She taught at the College of William and Mary, Smith College, and Amherst College, but it was her time spent in Manhattan, in a remote part of Maine, and on various trips to Europe, the former Soviet Union, Iowa, Wales, and England that most directly influenced her work. Clampitt was the recipient of a 1982 Guggenheim Fellowship, a MacArthur Fellowship (1992), and she was a member of the American Academy of Arts and Letters and the American Academy of Poets. She died of cancer in September 1994.

George Canning, FRS, (11 April 1770– 8 August 1827) was a British statesman and Tory politician who served in various senior cabinet positions under numerous Prime Ministers, before himself serving as Prime Minister for the final four months of his life. The son of an actress and a failed businessman and lawyer, Canning was supported financially by his uncle Stratford, allowing him to attend Eton College and Christ Church, Oxford. Canning entered politics in 1793 and rose rapidly. He was Paymaster of the Forces (1800–01) and Treasurer of the Navy (1804–06) under William Pitt the Younger and Foreign Secretary (1807–09) under the Duke of Portland. In 1809, he was wounded in a duel with his foe Lord Castlereagh and was shortly thereafter passed over as a potential prime ministerial successor to the Duke of Portland in favour of Spencer Perceval. He rejected overtures to serve as Foreign Secretary again, owing to Castlereagh’s presence in Perceval’s Cabinet, and he remained out of high office until after Perceval was assassinated in 1812. Canning subsequently served under new Prime Minister the Earl of Liverpool as British Ambassador to Portugal (1814–16), President of the Board of Control (1816–21), and Foreign Secretary and Leader of the House of Commons (1822–27). When Lord Liverpool resigned in ailing health in April 1827, Canning was chosen to succeed him as Prime Minister ahead of the Duke of Wellington and Sir Robert Peel. They both declined to serve under Canning and the Tories split between Peel and Wellington’s Ultra-Tories and the Canningites. Canning thus invited several Whigs to join his cabinet. However, his administration did not last long. His health declined and he died in office in August 1827, after just 119 days in office, the shortest tenure of any British Prime Minister. Early life Canning was born into an Anglo-Irish family at his parents’ home in Queen Anne Street, Marylebone, London. Canning described himself as “an Irishman born in London”. His father, George Canning, Sr., of Garvagh, County Londonderry, Ireland, was a gentleman of limited means, a failed wine merchant and lawyer, who renounced his right to inherit the family estate in exchange for payment of his substantial debts. George Sr. eventually abandoned the family and died in poverty on 11 April 1771, his son’s first birthday, in London. Canning’s mother, Mary Anne Costello, took work as a stage actress, a profession not considered respectable at the time. Indeed, when in 1827 it looked as if Canning would become Prime Minister, Lord Grey remarked that “the son of an actress is, ipso facto, disqualified from becoming Prime Minister”. Because Canning showed unusual intelligence and promise at an early age, family friends persuaded his uncle, London merchant Stratford Canning (father to the diplomat Stratford Canning), to become his nephew’s guardian. George Canning grew up with his cousins at the home of his uncle, who provided him with an income and an education. Stratford Canning’s financial support allowed the young Canning to study at Hyde Abbey School, Eton College and Christ Church, Oxford. Canning came out top of the school at Eton and left at the age of seventeen. His time at Eton has been described as “a triumph almost without parallel. He proved a brilliant classicist, came top of the school, and excelled at public orations”. Canning struck up friendships with the future Lord Liverpool as well as with Granville Leveson-Gower and John Hookham Frere. In 1789 he won a prize for his Latin poem The Pilgrimage to Mecca which he recited in Oxford Theatre. Canning began practising law after receiving his BA from Oxford in the summer of 1791, but he wished to enter politics. Entry into politics Stratford Canning was a Whig and would introduce his nephew in the 1780s to prominent Whigs such as Charles James Fox, Edmund Burke, and Richard Brinsley Sheridan. George Canning’s friendship with Sheridan would last for the remainder of Sheridan’s life. George Canning’s impoverished background and limited financial resources, however, made unlikely a bright political future in a Whig party whose political ranks were led mostly by members of the wealthy landed aristocracy in league with the newly rich industrialist classes. Regardless, along with Whigs such as Burke, Canning himself would become considerably more conservative in the early 1790s after witnessing the excessive radicalism of the French Revolution. “The political reaction which then followed swept the young man to the opposite extreme; and his vehemence for monarchy and the Tories gave point to a Whig sarcasm,—that men had often turned their coats, but this was the first time a boy had turned his jacket.” So when Canning decided to enter politics he sought and received the patronage of the leader of the “Tory” group, William Pitt the Younger. In 1793, thanks to the help of Pitt, Canning became a member of parliament for Newtown on the Isle of Wight, a rotten borough. In 1796, he changed seats to a different rotten borough, Wendover in Buckinghamshire. He was elected to represent several constituencies during his parliamentary career. Canning rose quickly in British politics as an effective orator and writer. His speeches in Parliament as well as his essays gave the followers of Pitt a rhetorical power they had previously lacked. Canning’s skills saw him gain leverage within the Pittite faction that allowed him influence over its policies along with repeated promotions in the Cabinet. Over time, Canning became a prominent public speaker as well, and was one of the first politicians to campaign heavily in the country. As a result of his charisma and promise, Canning early on drew to himself a circle of supporters who would become known as the Canningites. Conversely though, Canning had a reputation as a divisive man who alienated many. He was a dominant personality and often risked losing political allies for personal reasons. He once reduced Lord Liverpool to tears with a long satirical poem mocking Liverpool’s attachment to his time as a colonel in the militia. He then forced Liverpool to apologise for being upset. Under Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs On 2 November 1795, Canning received his first ministerial post: Under Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs. In this post he proved a strong supporter of Pitt, often taking his side in disputes with the Foreign Secretary, Lord Grenville. At the end of 1798 Canning responded to a resolution by George Tierney MP for peace negotiations with France: I for my part still conceive it to be the paramount duty of a British member of parliament to consider what is good for Great Britain... I do not envy that man’s feelings, who can behold the sufferings of Switzerland, and who derives from that sight no idea of what is meant by the deliverance of Europe. I do not envy the feelings of that man, who can look without emotion at Italy– plundered, insulted, trampled upon, exhausted, covered with ridicule, and horror, and devastation– who can look at all this, and be at a loss to guess what is meant by the deliverance of Europe? As little do I envy the feelings of that man, who can view the peoples of the Netherlands driven into insurrection, and struggling for their freedom against the heavy hand of a merciless tyranny, without entertaining any suspicion of what may be the sense of the word deliverance. Does such a man contemplate Holland groaning under arbitrary oppressions and exactions? Does he turn his eyes to Spain trembling at the nod of a foreign master? And does the word deliverance still sound unintelligibly in his ear? Has he heard of the rescue and salvation of Naples, by the appearance and the triumphs of the British fleet? Does he know that the monarchy of Naples maintains its existence at the sword’s point? And is his understanding, and his heart, still impenetrable to the sense and meaning of the deliverance of Europe? Pitt called this speech “one of the best ever heard on any occasion”. He resigned his position at the Foreign Office on 1 April 1799. The Anti-Jacobin Canning was involved in the founding of the Anti-Jacobin, a newspaper which was published on every Monday from 20 November 1797 to 9 July 1798. Its purpose was to support the government and condemn revolutionary doctrines through news and poetry, much of it written by Canning. Canning’s poetry satirised and ridiculed Jacobin poetry. Before the appearance of the Anti-Jacobin all the eloquence (except for Burke’s) and all the wit and ridicule had been on the side of Fox and Sheridan. Canning and his friends changed this. A young Whig, William Lamb (the future Lord Melbourne, Prime Minister) wrote an 'Epistle to the Editors of the Anti-Jacobin’, which attacked Canning: Who e’er ye are, all hail!– whether the skill Of youthful CANNING guides the ranc’rous quill; With powers mechanic far above his age, Adapts the paragraph and fills the page; Measures the column, mends what e’er’s amiss, Rejects THAT letter, and accepts of THIS; Subsequent offices In 1799 Canning became a Commissioner of the Board of Control for India. Canning wrote on 16 April: “Here I am immersed in papers, of which I do not yet comprehend three words in succession; but I shall get at their meaning by degrees and at my leisure. No such hard work here as at my former office. No attendance but when I like it, when there are interesting letters received from India (as is now the case) or to be sent out there”. Canning was appointed Paymaster of the Forces (and therefore to the Privy Council as well) in 1800. In February 1801 Pitt resigned as Prime Minister due to the King’s opposition to Catholic Emancipation. Canning, despite Pitt’s advice to stay in office, loyally followed him into opposition. The day after Canning wrote Lady Malmesbury: “I resign because Pitt resigns. And that is all”. Backbenches Canning disliked being out of office, and wrote on to John Hookham Frere in summer 1801: “But the thought will obtrude itself now and then that I am not where I should be– non-hoc pollicitus.” He also claimed that Pitt had done “scrupulously and magnanimously right by everyone but me”. At the end of September 1801 Canning wrote to Frere, saying of Pitt: “I do love him, and reverence him as I should a Father– but a Father should not sacrifice me, with my good will. Most heartily I forgive him, But he has to answer to himself, and to the country for much mischief that he has done and much that is still to do.” Pitt wished for Canning to enter Henry Addington’s government, a move which Canning looked on as a horrible dilemma but in the end he turned the offer down. Canning opposed the preliminaries of the Peace of Amiens signed on 1 October. He did not vote against it due to his personal devotion to Pitt. He wrote on 22 November: “I would risk my life to be assured of being able to act always with P in a manner satisfactory to my own feelings and sense of what is right, rather than have to seek that object in separation from him.” On 27 May 1802 in the Commons Canning requested that all grants of land in Trinidad (captured by Britain from Spain) should be rejected until Parliament had decided what to do with the island. The threat that it could be populated by slaves like other West Indian islands was real. Canning instead wanted it to have a military post and that it should be settled with ex-soldiers, free blacks and creoles, with the Native American population protected and helped. He also asserted that the island should be used to test the theory that better methods of cultivation in land would lessen the need for slaves. Addington acceded to Canning’s demands and the Reverend William Leigh believed Canning had saved 750,000 lives. At a dinner to celebrate Pitt’s birthday in 1802, Canning wrote the song ‘The Pilot that Weathered the Storm’, performed by a tenor from Drury Lane, Charles Dignum: And oh! if again the rude whirlwind should rise, The dawnings of peace should fresh darkness deform, The regrets of the good and the fears of the wise Shall turn to the Pilot that weathered the Storm. In November Canning spoke out openly in support of Pitt in the Commons. One observer thought that Canning made incomparably the best speech and that his defence of Pitt’s administration “one of the best things, either argumentatively as to matter, or critically and to manner and style” that he could ever remember. On 8 December Sheridan spoke out in defence of Addington and denied that Pitt was the only man who could save the country. Canning replied by criticising the Addington government’s foreign policy and claimed that the House should recognise the greatness of the country and Pitt, who ought to be its leader. He argued against those, such as William Wilberforce, who held that Britain could safely maintain a policy of isolation: “Let us consider the state of the world as it is, not as we fancy it ought to be. Let us not seek to hide from our own eyes... the real, imminent and awful danger which threatens us.” Also, he objected to the notion that Britain could choose between greatness and happiness: “The choice is not in our power. We have... no refuge in littleness. We must maintain ourselves what we are, or cease to have a political existence worth preserving.” Furthermore, he openly declared for Pitt and said: "Away with the cant of “measures, not men”, the idle supposition that it is the harness and not the horses that draw the chariot along." Kingdoms rise and fall due to what degree they are upheld “not by well-meaning endeavours... but by commanding, over-awing talents... retreat and withdraw as much as he will, he must not hope to efface the memory of his past services from the gratitude of his country; he cannot withdraw himself from the following of a nation; he must endure the attachment of a people whom he has saved.” In private Canning was fearful that if Pitt did not return to power, Fox would: “Sooner or later he must act or the country is gone.” Canning approved of the declaration of war against France on 18 May 1803. Canning was angered by Pitt’s desire not to proactively work to turn out the ministry but support the ministry when it adopted sound policies. However, in 1804, to Canning’s delight, Pitt began to work against the Addington government. After Pitt delivered a stinging attack on the government’s defence measures on 25 April, Canning launched his own attack on Addington, which made Addington furious. On 30 April Lord Eldon, the Lord Chancellor, asked Pitt to submit a new administration to the King. Treasurer of the Navy Canning returned to office in 1804 with Pitt, becoming Treasurer of the Navy. In 1805 he offered Pitt his resignation after Addington was given a seat in the Cabinet. He wrote to Lady Hester to say he felt humiliated that Addington was a minister “and I am– nothing. I cannot help it, I cannot face the House of Commons or walk the streets in this state of things, as I am”. After reading this letter Pitt summoned Canning to London for a meeting, where he told him that if he resigned it would open a permanent breach between the two of them as it would cast a slur on his conduct. He offered Canning the office of Chief Secretary for Ireland but he refused on the grounds that this would look like he was being got out of the way. Canning eventually decided not to resign and wrote that “I am resolved to ”sink or swim" with Pitt, though he has tied himself to such sinking company. God forgive him". Canning left office with the death of Pitt; he was not offered a place in Lord Grenville’s administration. Foreign Secretary Canning was appointed Foreign Secretary in the new government of the Duke of Portland in 1807. Given key responsibilities for the country’s diplomacy in the Napoleonic Wars, he was responsible for planning the attack on Copenhagen in September 1807, much of which he undertook at his country estate, South Hill Park at Easthampstead in Berkshire. After the defeat of Prussia by the French, the neutrality of Denmark looked increasingly fragile. Canning was worried that Denmark might, under French pressure, become hostile to Britain. On the night of 21/22 July 1807 Canning received intelligence directly from Tilsit (where Napoleon and Tsar Alexander I of Russia were negotiating a treaty) which appeared “to rest on good authority” that Napoleon had proposed to the Tsar a great naval combination against Britain, of which Denmark and Portugal would be members. On 30 July a military force 25,000 strong set sail for Denmark, with Francis Jackson travelling the day after. Canning instructed Jackson that his over-riding aim was to secure the possession of the Danish navy by offering the Danes a treaty of alliance and mutual defence and whereby they would be given back their fleet at the end of the war. On 31 July Canning wrote to his wife: "The anxious interval between this day and the hearing the result of his [Jackson’s] expedition will be long and painful indeed. Long, I mean, in feeling. In fact it will be about a fortnight or three weeks... I think we have made success almost certain. But the measure is a bold one and if it fails– why we must be impeached I suppose– and dearest dear will have a box at the trial". The day after he wrote that he had received a letter the previous night which provided an “account of the French being actually about to do that act of hostility, the possibility of which formed the groundwork of my Baltic plan. My fear was that the French might not be the aggressors– and then ours would have appeared a strong measure, fully justifiable I think and absolutely necessary, but without apparent necessity or justification. Now the aggression will justify us fully... I am therefore quite easy as to the morality and political wisdom of our plan”. Napoleon had on 31 July instructed his Foreign Minister, Talleyrand, to inform the Danes that if they did not wish for Holstein to be invaded and occupied by Jean Bernadotte they must prepare for war against Britain. Canning wrote to his wife on 1 August: "Now for the execution and I confess to my own love, I wake an hour or two earlier than I ought to, thinking of this execution. I could not sleep after asses’ milk today, thought I was not in bed till 1/2 p.2". On 25 August he wrote to Granville Leveson-Gower: “The suspense is, as you may well imagine, agitating and painful in the extreme; but I have an undiminished confidence as to the result, either by force or by treaty. The latter however is so infinitely preferable to the former that the doubt whether it has been successful is of itself almost as anxious as if the whole depended on it alone”. On 2 September, after Jackson’s negotiations proved unsuccessful, the British fleet began bombarding Copenhagen until when on 7pm 5 September the Danes requested a truce. On 7 September the Danes agreed to hand over their navy (18 ships of the line, 15 frigates and 31 smaller ships) and naval stores and the British agreed to evacuate Zealand within six weeks. On 16 September Canning received the news with relief and excitement: “Did I not tell you we would save Plumstead from bombardment?” he wrote to Revered William Leigh. On 24 September he wrote to George Rose: "Nothing was ever more brilliant, more salutary or more effectual than the success [at Copenhagen]". On 30 September he wrote Lord Boringdon that he hoped Copenhagen would “stun Russia into her sense again”. Canning wrote to Gower on 2 October 1807: “We are hated throughout Europe and that hate must be cured by fear”. After the news of Russia’s declaration of war against Britain reached London on 2 December, Canning wrote to Lord Boringdon two days later: “The Peace of Tilsit you see is come out. We did not want any more case for Copenhagen; but if we had, this gives it us”. On 3 February 1808 the opposition leader George Ponsonby requested the publication of all information on the strength and battle-worthiness of the Danish fleet sent by the British envoy at Copenhagen. Canning replied with a speech nearly three hours long, described by Lord Palmerston as “so powerful that it gave a decisive turn to the debate”. Lord Grey said his speech was “eloquent and powerful” but that he had never heard such “audacious misrepresentation” and “positive falsehood”. On 2 March the opposition moved a vote of censure over Copenhagen, defeated by 224 votes to 64 after Canning gave a speech, in the words of Lord Glenbervie, so “very witty, very eloquent and very able”. In November 1807, Canning oversaw the Portuguese royal family’s flight from Portugal to Brazil. Duel with Castlereagh In 1809 Canning entered into a series of disputes within the government that were to become famous. He argued with the Secretary of State for War and the Colonies, Lord Castlereagh, over the deployment of troops that Canning had promised would be sent to Portugal but which Castlereagh sent to the Netherlands. The government became increasingly paralysed in disputes between the two men. Portland was in deteriorating health and gave no lead, until Canning threatened resignation unless Castlereagh were removed and replaced by Lord Wellesley. Portland secretly agreed to make this change when it would be possible. Castlereagh discovered the deal in September 1809 and challenged Canning to a duel. Canning accepted the challenge and it was fought on 21 September 1809 on Putney Heath. Canning, who had never before fired a pistol, widely missed his mark. Castlereagh, who was regarded as one of the best shots of his day, wounded his opponent in the thigh. There was much outrage that two cabinet ministers had resorted to such a method. Shortly afterwards the ailing Portland resigned as Prime Minister, and Canning offered himself to George III as a potential successor. However, the King appointed Spencer Perceval instead, and Canning left office once more. He did take consolation, though, in the fact that Castlereagh also stood down. Upon Perceval’s assassination in 1812, the new Prime Minister, Lord Liverpool, offered Canning the position of Foreign Secretary once more. Canning refused, as he also wished to be Leader of the House of Commons and was reluctant to serve in any government with Castlereagh. Ambassador to Lisbon In 1814 he became the British Ambassador to Portugal, returning the following year. He received several further offers of office from Liverpool. President of the Board of Control In 1816 he became President of the Board of Control. Canning resigned from office once more in 1820, in opposition to the treatment of Queen Caroline, estranged wife of the new King George IV. Canning and Caroline were close friends and may have had a brief sexual affair. This would have been regarded as unacceptable. On 16 March 1821 Canning spoke in favour of William Plunket’s Catholic Emancipation Bill. Liverpool wished to have Canning back in the Cabinet but the King was strongly hostile to him due to his actions over the Caroline affair. The King would only allow Canning back into the Cabinet if he did not have to deal personally with him. This required the office of Governor-General of India. After deliberating on whether to accept, Canning initially declined the offer but then accepted it. On 25 April he spoke in the Commons against Lord John Russell’s motion for parliamentary reform and a few days later Canning moved for leave to introduce a measure of Catholic Emancipation (for lifting the exclusion of Catholics from the House of Lords). This passed the Commons but was rejected by the Lords. Foreign Secretary and Leader of the House In August 1822, Castlereagh, now Marquess of Londonderry, committed suicide. Instead of going to India, Canning succeeded him as both Foreign Secretary and Leader of the House of Commons. In his second term of office he sought to prevent South America from coming into the French sphere of influence, and in this he was successful. He also gave support to the growing campaign for the abolition of slavery. Despite personal issues with Castlereagh, he continued many of his foreign policies, such as the view that the powers of Europe (Russia, France, etc.) should not be allowed to meddle in the affairs of other states. This policy enhanced public opinion of Canning as a liberal. He also prevented the United States from opening trade with the West Indies. During his early period in the Foreign Office (1807–09) Canning became deeply involved in the affairs of Spain, Portugal and Latin America. He was responsible for a number of decisions that greatly affected the future course of Latin American history. Great Britain had a strong interest in ensuring the demise of Spanish colonialism, and to open the newly independent Latin American colonies to British trade. The Latin Americans received a certain amount of unofficial aid– arms and volunteers– from outside, but no outside official help at any stage from Britain or any other power. Britain also refused to aid Spain and opposed any outside intervention on behalf of Spain by other powers. Britain, and especially British sea power, was a decisive factor in the struggle for independence of certain Latin American countries. In 1825 Mexico, Argentina and Colombia were recognised by means of the ratification of commercial treaties with Britain. In November 1825 the first minister from a Latin American state, Colombia, was officially received in London. “Spanish America is free,” Canning declared, “and if we do not mismanage our affairs she is English... the New World established and if we do not throw it away, ours.” Also in 1825, Portugal recognised Brazil (thanks to Canning’s efforts, and in return for a preferential commercial treaty), less than three years after Brazil’s declaration of independence. On 12 December 1826, in the House of Commons, Canning was given an opportunity to defend the policies he had adopted towards France, Spain and Spanish America, and declared: “I resolved that if France had Spain it should not be Spain with the Indies. I called the New World into existence to redress the balance of the Old.” Canning pushed through, against great opposition, British recognition of Argentina, Colombia, Mexico and Brazil. In a sense, therefore, he brought part of the New World into political existence. The United States had recognised these states earlier, but recognition by the leading world power was to be decisive. Recognition by Britain was greeted with enthusiasm throughout Latin America. Canning, who was more concerned with Britain’s political and economic interests in Latin America than with Latin American independence, did a great deal to enhance Britain’s prestige throughout Latin America. He was esteemed as a great liberal statesman who understood and sympathised with the cause of Latin American independence and who did more than any other foreign statesman to make it a reality. George Canning deserves credit as the first British Foreign Secretary to devote a large proportion of his time and energies to the affairs of Latin America (as well as to those of Spain and Portugal) and to foresee the important political and economic role the Latin American states would one day play in the world. In 1826 he was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society. Prime Minister In 1827 Liverpool was forced to stand down as Prime Minister after suffering a severe stroke (and was to die the following year). Canning, as Liverpool’s right-hand man, was then chosen by George IV to succeed him, in preference to both the Duke of Wellington and Sir Robert Peel. Neither man agreed to serve under Canning, and they were followed by five other members of Liverpool’s Cabinet as well as 40 junior members of the government. The Tory party was now heavily split between the “High Tories” (or “Ultras”, nicknamed after the contemporary party in France) and the moderates supporting Canning, often called “Canningites”. As a result, Canning found it difficult to form a government and chose to invite a number of Whigs to join his Cabinet, including Lord Lansdowne. The government agreed not to discuss the difficult question of parliamentary reform, which Canning opposed but the Whigs supported. However, Canning’s health by this time was in steep decline: at the funeral of Frederick, Duke of York, which was held at night in an unheated chapel in January, he became so ill that it was thought he might not recover. He died on 8 August 1827, in the very same room where Charles James Fox met his own end, 21 years earlier. To this day Canning’s total period in office remains the shortest of any Prime Minister of the United Kingdom, a mere 119 days. He is buried in Westminster Abbey. Legacy Canning has come to be regarded as a “lost leader”, with much speculation about what his legacy could have been had he lived. His government of Tories and Whigs continued for a few months under Lord Goderich but fell apart in early 1828. It was succeeded by a government under the Duke of Wellington, which initially included some Canningites but soon became mostly “High Tory” when many of the Canningites drifted over to the Whigs. Wellington’s administration would soon go down in defeat as well. Some historians have seen the revival of the Tories from the 1830s onwards, in the form of the Conservative Party, as the overcoming of the divisions of 1827. What would have been the course of events had Canning lived is highly speculative. Rory Muir has described Canning as “the most brilliant and colourful minister, and certainly the greatest orator in the government at a time when oratory was still politically important. He was a man of biting wit and invective, with immense confidence in his own ability, who often inspired either great friendship or deep dislike and distrust... he was a passionate, active, committed man who poured his energy into whatever he undertook. This was his strength and also his weakness... the government’s ablest minister”. Greville recorded of Canning on the day after his death: “He wrote very fast, but not fast enough for his mind, composing much quicker than he could commit his ideas to paper. He could not bear to dictate, because nobody could write fast enough for him; but on one occasion, when he had the gout in his hand and could not write, he stood by the fire and dictated at the same time a despatch on Greek affairs to George Bentinck and one on South American politics to Howard de Walden, each writing as fast as he could, while he turned from one to the other without hesitation or embarrassment.” Places named after Canning The Canning River in Western Australia is named after George Canning. It flows into the Swan River south of Perth and has a number of districts named similarly (after the river, rather than Canning himself) on its banks, for example Cannington and Canning Vale. Elsewhere in Australia, there is a street in Melbourne, Australia named after him. The village of Canning in the Annapolis Valley of Nova Scotia is named after Canning. Cannington, Ontario, is a small village in Brock Township. A square in downtown Athens, Greece, is named after Canning (Πλατεία Κάνιγγος, Plateía Kánningos, Canning Square), in appreciation of his supportive stance toward the Greek War of Independence (1821–1830). In South America, a street in the city of Buenos Aires has been on-and-off named after Canning since 1893, changing away from the name in 1985. There is also a street in the Uruguayan capital of Montevideo named Jorge Canning, which is coincidentally the location of the British Residence. There is also a street named after him in the district of Ipanema, Rio de Janeiro, Brazil. In Santiago, Chile there two streets called Jorge (Spanish for George) Canning, one in the commune of San Joaquin and other, smaller, in the commune of Ñuñoa. One Street in Liverpool is named after George Canning; the surrounding Canning neighbourhood, also known as the “Georgian Quarter,” derives its name from the street. Canning Circus is an area at the top of Zion Hill in Nottingham. In his memory. Canning Terrace was erected as almshouses and a gatehouse to the adjacent cemetery. Canning Town in London is often thought of as being named after George Canning, but was in fact named after his son Charles Canning, 1st Earl Canning, Governor-General of India during the Indian Mutiny. Elsewhere in London, a Brixton public house on the corner of Effra Road and Brixton Water Lane was called the George Canning (it was renamed the Hobgoblin in the late 1990s and the Hootenanny in 2008). A Camberwell public house on Grove Lane near Denmark Hill station is called the George Canning. The seat of the Hispanic and Luso Brazilian Council in the Belgravia neighbourhood of London is named Canning House. It houses a research library and is used for a range of cultural and educational events. Fort Canning, a hill in Singapore, is actually named after Canning’s son Viscount Charles Canning although many mistakenly believe that it was named after George Canning himself. The hill was previously known simply as Government Hill and earlier as Bukit Larangan (Malay for Forbidden Hill) as it was once the seat for Malay royalty. Having served as an administrative centre for the British colonial administration in Singapore, it was then converted into a fort during World War I but wasn’t used till second world war. It is currently one of Singapore’s oldest urban parks. Canning is a district of Liverpool and Canning Place was the site of the famous Liverpool Sailors’ Home. The Canning Club, a gentlemen’s club in central London. Founded in 1911 as the Argentine Club for expatriate businessmen, it was renamed in 1948 as the club extended its remit to the rest of Latin America, in honour of Canning’s strong ties to the region. The club currently shares the premises of the Naval and Military Club in St. James’s Square. Family Canning married Joan Scott (later 1st Viscountess Canning) (1776–1837) on 8 July 1800, with John Hookham Frere and William Pitt the Younger as witnesses. George and Joan Canning had four children: George Charles Canning (1801–1820), died from consumption William Pitt Canning (1802–1828), died from drowning in Madeira, Portugal Harriet Canning (1804–1876), married the 1st Marquess of Clanricarde Charles John Canning (later 2nd Viscount Canning and 1st Earl Canning) (1812–1862) Canning’s Government, April– August 1827 George Canning– First Lord of the Treasury, Chancellor of the Exchequer and Leader of the House of Commons Lord Lyndhurst– Lord Chancellor Lord Harrowby– Lord President of the Council The Duke of Portland– Lord Privy Seal William Sturges Bourne– Secretary of State for the Home Department Lord Dudley– Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs Lord Goderich– Secretary of State for War and the Colonies and Leader of the House of Lords William Huskisson– President of the Board of Trade and Treasurer of the Navy Charles Williams-Wynn– President of the Board of Control Lord Bexley– Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster Lord Palmerston– Secretary at War Lord Lansdowne– Minister without Portfolio Changes May 1827– Lord Carlisle, the First Commissioner of Woods and Forests, enters the Cabinet July 1827– The Duke of Portland becomes a minister without portfolio. Lord Carlisle succeeds him as Lord Privy Seal. W. S. Bourne succeeds Carlisle as First Commissioner of Woods and Forests. Lord Lansdowne succeeds Bourne as Home Secretary. George Tierney, the Master of the Mint, enters the cabinet References Wikipedia—https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/George_Canning

Zora Bernice May Cross (18 May 1890– 22 January 1964) was an Australian poet, novelist and journalist. She was born on May 18, 1890 on Eagle Farm, Brisbane to Earnest William Cross and Mary Louisa Eliza Ann. Her father was a Sydney born accountant. Cross inherited her love for literature from both her parents, poetry from her mother and Celtic knowledge from her father, who was also the son of an Irish printer. and was educated at Ipswich Girls’ Grammar School and then Sydney Teachers’ College from 1909 to 1910. She taught for three years and then worked as a journalist, for the Boomerang and then as a freelance writer. On March 11, 1911, she married Stuart Smith but later refused to live with him. This led to her marriage being dissolved on September 10, 1922. Later on in her life, Cross had a “de facto” husband, David McKee Wright, who she had two daughters with.

Arthur Chapman (June 25, 1873 – December 4, 1935) was an early twentieth-century American poet and newspaper columnist. He wrote a subgenre of American poetry known as Cowboy Poetry. His most famous poem was Out Where the West Begins. Circa 1910, after reading in an Associated Press report of a conference of the governors of the western states at which the geographic beginning of the U.S. West was disputed, he hastily composed what was to become his most famous poem, “Out Where the West Begins,” celebrating the people and the land of the frontier.

Charles Stuart Calverley (/ˈkɑːvərlɪ/; 22 December 1831– 17 February 1884) was an English poet and wit. He was the literary father of what has been called “the university school of humour”. Early life He was born at Martley, Worcestershire, and given the name Charles Stuart Blayds. In 1852, his father, the Rev. Henry Blayds, resumed the old family name of Calverley, which his grandfather had exchanged for Blayds in 1807. Charles went up to Balliol College, Oxford from Harrow School in 1850, and was soon known in Oxford as the most daring and high-spirited undergraduate of his time. He was a universal favourite, a delightful companion, a brilliant scholar and the playful enemy of all “dons.” In 1851 he won the Chancellor’s prize for Latin verse, but it is said that the entire exercise was written in an afternoon, when his friends had locked him into his rooms, refusing to let him out until he had finished what they were confident would prove the prize poem. A year later, to avoid the consequences of a college escapade (he had been expelled from Oxford), he too changed his name to Calverley and moved to Christ’s College, Cambridge. Here he was again successful in Latin verse, the only undergraduate to have won the Chancellor’s prize at both universities. In 1856 he took second place in the first class in the Classical Tripos. Later life He was elected fellow of Christ’s (1858), published Verses and Translations in 1862, and was called to the bar in 1865. Injuries sustained in a skating accident prevented him from following a professional career, and during the last years of his life he was an invalid. He died of Bright’s disease. Works * Nowadays he is best-known (at least in Cambridge, his adoptive home) as the author of the Ode to Tobacco which is to be found on a bronze plaque in Rose crescent, on the wall of what used to be Bacon’s the tobacconist. * His Translations into English and Latin appeared in 1866; his Theocritus translated into English Verse in 1869; Fly Leaves in 1872; and Literary Remains in 1885. * His Complete Works, with a biographical notice by Walter Joseph Sendall, a contemporary at Christ’s and his brother-in-law, appeared in 1901. * George W. E. Russell said of him: * He was a true poet; he was one of the most graceful scholars that Cambridge ever produced; and all his exuberant fun was based on a broad and strong foundation of Greek, Latin, and English literature. References Wikipedia—https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charles_Stuart_Calverley

Charles Churchill (February, 1732– 4 November 1764), was an English poet and satirist. Early life Churchill was born in Vine Street, Westminster. His father, rector of Rainham, Essex, held the curacy and lectureship of St Johns, Westminster, from 1733, and Charles was educated at Westminster School, where he became a good classical scholar, and formed a close and lasting friendship with Robert Lloyd. He was admitted to St John’s College, Cambridge on 8 July 1748. Churchill contracted a marriage within the rules of the Fleet in his eighteenth year, and never lived at Cambridge; the young couple lived in his father’s house, and Churchill was afterwards sent to the north of England to prepare for holy orders. He became curate of South Cadbury, Somerset, and, on receiving priest’s orders (1756), began to act as his father’s curate at Rainham. Two years later the elder Churchill died, and the son was elected to succeed him in his curacy and lectureship. His emoluments amounted to less than £100 a year, and he increased his income by teaching in a girls’ school. His marriage proved unhappy, and he began to spend much of his time in dissipation in the society of Robert Lloyd. He was separated from his wife in 1761, and would have been imprisoned for debt but for the timely help of Lloyd’s father, who had been an usher and was now a master at Westminster. Career as Satirist Churchill had already done some work for the booksellers, and his friend Lloyd had had some success with a didactic poem, The Actor. Churchill’s knowledge of the theatre was now made use of in the Rosciad, which appeared in March 1761. This reckless and amusing satire described with the most disconcerting accuracy the faults of the various actors and actresses on the London stage; in a competition judged by Shakespeare and Jonson, Garrick is named the greatest English actor. Its immediate popularity was no doubt largely due to its personal character, but its vigour and raciness make it worth reading even now when the objects of Churchill’s wit are forgotten. The first impression was published anonymously, and in the Critical Review, conducted by Tobias Smollett, it was confidently asserted that the poem was the joint production of George Colman the Elder, Bonnell Thornton and Robert Lloyd. Churchill immediately published an Apology addressed to the Critical Reviewers, which, after developing the subject that it is only authors who prey on their own kind, repeats the fierce attack on the stage. Incidentally it contains an enthusiastic tribute to John Dryden, of whom Churchill was a devotee. In the Rosciad he had praised Mrs Pritchard, Mrs Cibber and Mrs Clive, but no leading London actor, with the exception of David Garrick, had escaped censure, and in the Apology Garrick was clearly threatened. He deprecated criticism by showing every possible civility to Churchill, who became a terror to the actors. Thomas Davies wrote to Garrick attributing his blundering in the part of Cymbeline “to my accidentally seeing Mr Churchill in the pit, it rendering me confused and unmindful of my business.” Churchill’s satire made him many enemies, and brought reprisals. In Night, an Epistle to Robert Lloyd (1761), he answered the attacks made on him, offering by way of defense the argument that any faults were better than hypocrisy. His scandalous conduct brought down the censure of the dean of Westminster, and in 1763 the protests of his parishioners led him to resign his offices, and he was free to wear his blue coat with metal buttons and much gold lace without remonstrance from the dean. The Rosciad had been refused by several publishers, and was finally published at Churchill’s own expense. He received a considerable sum from the sale, and paid his old creditors in full, besides making an allowance to his wife. Friendship with Wilkes He now became a close ally of John Wilkes, whom he regularly assisted with The North Briton weekly newspaper. His next poem, The Prophecy of Famine: A Scots Pastoral (1763), was founded on a paper written originally for that newspaper. This violent satire on Scottish influence fell in with the current hatred of Lord Bute, and the Scottish place-hunters were as much alarmed as the actors had been. When Wilkes was arrested he gave Churchill a timely hint to retire to the country for a time, the publisher, Kearsley, having stated that he received part of the profits from the paper. His Epistle to William Hogarth (1763) was in answer to the caricature of Wilkes made during the trial, in it Hogarth’s vanity and envy were attacked in an invective which Garrick quoted as shocking and barbarous. Hogarth retaliated by a caricature of Churchill as a bear in torn clerical bands hugging a pot of porter and a club made of lies and North Britons. The Duellist (1763) is a virulent satire on the most active opponents of Wilkes in the House of Lords, especially on Bishop Warburton. He attacked Dr Johnson among others in The Ghost as “Pomposo, insolent and loud, Vain idol of a scribbling crowd”. Other poems are The Conference (1763); The Author (1763), highly praised by Churchill’s contemporaries; Gotham (1764), a poem on the duties of a king, didactic rather than satiric in tone; The Candidate (1764), a satire on John Montagu, fourth earl of Sandwich, one of Wilkes’s bitterest enemies, whom he had already denounced for his treachery in The Duellist (Bk. iii.) as too infamous to have a friend; The Farewell (1764); The Times (1764); Independence, and an unfinished Journey. Death and Legacy In October 1764 he went to Boulogne to join Wilkes. There he was attacked by a fever of which he died on 4 November. He left his property to his two sons, and made Wilkes his literary executor with full powers. Wilkes did little. He wrote an epitaph for his friend and about half a dozen notes on his poems, and Andrew Kippis acknowledges some slight assistance from him in preparing his life of Churchill for the Biographia (1780). There is more than one instance of Churchill’s generosity to his friends. In 1763 he found his friend Robert Lloyd in prison for debt. He paid a guinea a week for his better maintenance in the Fleet, and raised a subscription to set him free. Lloyd fell ill on receipt of the news of Churchill’s death, and died shortly afterwards. Churchill’s sister Patty, who was engaged to Lloyd, did not long survive them. William Cowper was his schoolfellow, and left many kindly references to him. A partial collection of Churchill’s poems appeared in 1763. References Wikipedia—https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charles_Churchill_(satirist)

Abraham Cowley (1618– 28 July 1667) was an English poet born in the City of London late in 1618. He was one of the leading English poets of the 17th century, with 14 printings of his Works published between 1668 and 1721. Early life and career His father, a wealthy citizen, who died shortly before his birth, was a stationer. His mother was wholly given to works of devotion, but it happened that there lay in her parlour a copy of The Faerie Queene. This became the favourite reading of her son, and he had read it twice before he was sent to school. As early as 1628, that is, in his tenth year, he composed his Tragicall History of Piramus and Thisbe, an epic romance written in a six-line stanza, a style of his own invention. It is not too much to say that this work is the most astonishing feat of imaginative precocity on record; it is marked by no great faults of immaturity, and possesses constructive merits of a very high order. Two years later the child wrote another and still more ambitious poem, Constantia and Philetus, being sent about the same time to Westminster School. Here he displayed extraordinary mental precocity and versatility, and wrote in his thirteenth year the Elegy on the Death of Dudley, Lord Carlton. These three poems of considerable size, and some smaller ones, were collected in 1633, and published in a volume entitled Poetical Blossoms, dedicated to the head master of the school, and prefaced by many laudatory verses by schoolfellows. The author at once became famous, although he had not, even yet, completed his fifteenth year. His next composition was a pastoral comedy, entitled Love’s Riddle, a marvelous production for a boy of sixteen, airy, correct and harmonious in language, and rapid in movement. The style is not without resemblance to that of Randolph, whose earliest works, however, were at that time only just printed. In 1637 Cowley was elected into Trinity College, Cambridge, where he betook himself with enthusiasm to the study of all kinds of learning, and early distinguished himself as a ripe scholar. Portraits of Cowley, attributed to William Faithorne and Stephen Slaughter, are in Trinity College’s collection. It was about this time that he composed his scriptural epic on the history of King David, one book of which still exists in the Latin original, the rest being superseded in favour of an English version in four books, called the Davideis, which were published after his death. The epic deals with the adventures of King David from his boyhood to the smiting of Amalek by Saul, where it abruptly closes. In 1638 Love’s Riddle and a Latin comedy, the Naufragium Joculare, were printed, and in 1641 the passage of Prince Charles through Cambridge gave occasion to the production of another dramatic work, The Guardian, which was acted before the royal visitor with much success. During the civil war this play was privately performed at Dublin, but it was not printed till 1650. It is bright and amusing, in the style common to the “sons” of Ben Jonson, the university wits who wrote more for the closet than the public stage. Royalist in exile The learned quiet of the young poet’s life was broken up by the Civil War; he warmly espoused the royalist side. He became a fellow of Trinity College, Cambridge, but was ejected by the Parliamentarians in 1643. He made his way to Oxford, where he enjoyed the friendship of Lord Falkland, and was tossed, in the tumult of affairs, into the personal confidence of the royal family itself. After the battle of Marston Moor he followed the queen to Paris, and the exile so commenced lasted twelve years. This period was spent almost entirely in the royal service, “bearing a share in the distresses of the royal family, or labouring in their affairs. To this purpose he performed several dangerous journeys into Jersey, Scotland, Flanders, the Netherlands, or wherever else the king’s troubles required his attendance. But the chief testimony of his fidelity was the laborious service he underwent in maintaining the constant correspondence between the late king and the queen his wife. In that weighty trust he behaved himself with indefatigable integrity and unsuspected secrecy; for he ciphered and deciphered with his own hand the greatest part of all the letters that passed between their majesties, and managed a vast intelligence in many other parts, which for some years together took up all his days, and two or three nights every week.” In spite of these labours he did not refrain from literary industry. During his exile he met with the works of Pindar, and determined to reproduce their lofty lyric passion in English. However, Cowley misunderstood Pindar’s metrical practice and therefore his reproduction of the Pindaric Ode form in English does not accurately reflect Pindar’s poetics. But despite this problem, Cowley’s use of iambic lines of irregular length, pattern, and rhyme scheme was very influential and is still known as English “Pindarick” Ode, or Irregular Ode. One of the most famous odes written after Cowley in the Pindaric tradition is Wordsworth’s “Intimations of Immortality.” During this same time, Cowley occupied himself in writing a history of the Civil War (which did not get published in full until 1973). In the preface to his 1656 Poems, Cowley mentioned that he had completed three books of an epic poem on the Civil War, but had left it unfinished after the First Battle of Newbury when the Royalist cause began to lose significant ground. In the preface Cowley indicated that he had destroyed all copies of the poem, but this was not precisely the truth. In 1697, twelve years after Cowley’s death, a shortened version of the first book of the poem, called A Poem on the Late Civil War was published. It was assumed that the rest of the poem had indeed been destroyed or lost until the mid-20th century when scholar Allan Pritchard discovered the first of two extant manuscript copies of the whole poem among the Cowper family papers. Thus, the three completed books of Cowley’s great (albeit unfinished) English epic, The Civill Warre (otherwise spelled “The Civil War”), was finally published in full for the first time in 1973. In 1647 a collection of his love verses, entitled The Mistress, was published, and in the next year a volume of wretched satires, The Four Ages of England, was brought out under his name, with the composition of which he had nothing to do. In spite of the troubles of the times, so fatal to poetic fame, his reputation steadily increased, and when, on his return to England in 1656, he published a volume of his collected poetical works, he found himself without a rival in public esteem. This volume included the later works already mentioned, the Pindarique Odes, the Davideis, the Mistress and some Miscellanies. Among the latter are to be found Cowley’s most vital pieces. This section of his works opens with the famous aspiration: “What shall I do to be for ever known, And make the coming age my own?” It contains elegies on Wotton, Vandyck, Falkland, William Hervey and Crashaw, the last two being among Cowley’s finest poems, brilliant, sonorous and original; the amusing ballad of The Chronicle, giving a fictitious catalogue of his supposed amours; various gnomic pieces; and some charming paraphrases from Anacreon. The Pindarique Odes contain weighty Lines and passages, buried in irregular and inharmonious masses of moral verbiage. Not more than one or two are good throughout, but a full posy of beauties may easily be culled from them. The long cadences of the Alexandrines with which most of the strophes close, continued to echo in English poetry from Dryden down to Gray, but the Odes themselves, which were found to be obscure by the poet’s contemporaries, immediately fell into disesteem. The Mistress was the most popular poetic reading of the age, and is now the least read of all Cowley’s works. It was the last and most violent expression of the amatory affectation of the 17th century, an affectation which had been endurable in Donne and other early writers because it had been the vehicle of sincere emotion, but was unendurable in Cowley because in him it represented nothing but a perfunctory exercise, a mere exhibition of literary calisthenics. He appears to have been of a cold, or at least of a timid, disposition; in the face of these elaborately erotic volumes, we are told that to the end of his days he never summoned up courage to speak of love to a single woman in real life. The “Leonora” of The Chronicle is said to have been the only woman he ever loved, and she married the brother of his biographer, Sprat. Return to England Soon after his return to England he was seized in mistake for another person, and only obtained his liberty on a bail of £1000. In 1658 he revised and altered his play of The Guardian, and prepared it for the press under the title of The Cutter of Coleman Street, but it did not appear until 1661. Late in 1658 Oliver Cromwell died, and Cowley took advantage of the confusion of affairs to escape to Paris, where he remained until the Restoration brought him back in Charles’s train. He published in 1663 Verses upon several occasions, in which The Complaint is included. He is also known for having provided the earliest reference to coca in English literature, in a poem called “A legend of coca” in his 1662 collection of poems Six Books of Plants. Cowley obtained permission to retire into the country; and through his friend, Lord St Albans, he obtained a property near Chertsey, where, devoting himself to botany and books, he lived in comparative solitude until his death. He took a practical interest in experimental science, and he was one of those advocating the foundation of an academy for the protection of scientific enterprise. Cowley’s pamphlet on The Advancement of Experimental Philosophy, 1661, immediately preceded the foundation of the Royal Society; to which Cowley, in March 1667, at the suggestion of John Evelyn, addressed an ode. He died in the Porch House, in Chertsey, in consequence of having caught a cold while superintending his farm-labourers in the meadows late on a summer evening. On 3 August, Cowley was buried in Westminster Abbey beside the ashes of Chaucer and Spenser, where in 1675 the duke of Buckingham erected a monument to his memory. His Poemata Latina, including six books “Plantarum,” were printed in 1668. The poetry of Cowley rapidly fell into neglect. The works of Cowley were collected in 1668, when Thomas Sprat brought out an edition in folio, to which he prefixed a life of the poet. There were many reprints of this collection, which formed the standard edition till 1881, when it was superseded by Alexander Balloch Grosart’s privately printed edition in two volumes, for the Chertsey Worthies library. The Essays have frequently been revived. A Satire Against Separatists, printed in 1675, has been variously attributed to Cowley and to Peter Hausted. References Wikipedia—https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Abraham_Cowley

Ralph Nicholas Chubb (8 February 1892– 14 January 1960) was an English poet, printer, and artist. Heavily influenced by Whitman, Blake, and the Romantics, his work was the creation of a highly intricate personal mythology, one that was anti-materialist and sexually revolutionary. Life Ralph Chubb was born in Harpenden, Hertfordshire. His family moved to the historic town of St Albans before his first birthday. Chubb attended St Albans School and Selwyn College, Cambridge before becoming an officer in the First World War. He served with distinction but developed neurasthenia, and he was invalided out in 1918. From 1919 to 1922 Chubb studied at the Slade School of Art in London. It was there that he met Leon Underwood and other influential artists. He went on to contribute several articles and poems for Underwood’s magazine, The Island. Although his work was displayed at such venues as the Goupil Gallery and the Royal Academy of Art, his paintings did not sell. There are several in public collections in Britain. His major painting The Well (1920) is in Wakefield; Southampton has bathers with boys wrestling, and there are nudes at Leamington, all illustrated in the Public Art Foundation catalogues. He moved with his family to the village of Curridge, near Newbury in Berkshire. He began to devote his artistic talents to the printed works which would remain his chief labour in life. His books were created in several chief phases. His typeset books of the twenties were a humble offering, exhibiting Chubb’s talent for woodcutting and his quaint, visually inspired poetry. Even at this early stage, Chubb’s lifelong obsession with adolescent males was beginning to become apparent. He expands upon this theme more explicitly in An Appendix, a pederastic and spiritualist manifesto duplicated from a cursive manuscript. An Appendix was the first of his printed works to be printed in his own hand; he soon followed this with the first of his opulent lithographic books, The Sun Spirit. Throughout the nineteen-thirties, Chubb’s books became more elaborate and appealing. Water Cherubs crystallizes Chubb’s aesthetic of the youthful male form, and The Secret Country unfolds like an illuminated manuscript, recounting stories of Chubb’s family and his journeys among the Romani of the New Forest in Hampshire. Chubb’s printing press was interrupted by the war, but in 1948 he entered into the third period of career with two massive volumes: The Child Of Dawn and Flames of Sunrise. Each page of these two volumes is crowded with obscure digressions on Chubb’s mythology and drawings of symbolic significance. Briefly summarized, Chubb’s vision was a prophecy of the redemption of 'Albion’, or England, by the boy-god Ra-el-phaos, of whom Ralph claimed himself to be the prophet and herald. This echoes an earlier announcement to be found in The Heavenly Cupid: I announce a secret event as tremendous and mysterious as any that has occurred in the spiritual history of the world. I announce the inauguration of a Third Dispensation, the dispensation of the Holy Ghost on earth, and the visible advent thereof on earth in the form of a Young Boy of thirteen years old, naked perfect and unblemished. Other themes run through all of Chubb’s work. He was forever haunted by the memory of a young chorister at St Albans who disappeared from Chubb’s life just as he had summoned up the courage to speak to him. Similarly, a brief sexual relationship with another boy when Ralph was 19 seemed to serve as a template for future visions of paradise. Chubb’s books become progressively more self-involved and paranoid. Seeking to articulate his pederastic desires, he created a personal mythology which explained everything in terms only he could understand. Nonetheless, Chubb’s work is of fascinating psychological significance; each of the various angels, knights, seers, and boy-gods in his dream world represents an aspect of his introspective and persecuted self. Chubb, like many other artists of his generation, resented science for its intrusion into his imagination. He disparaged the scientists, orthodox theologians, and politicians of world, accusing them of squelching his personal thirst for liberty. In 1927 he wrote: Existence, besides being a miracle, is a symbol. Albeit here for inscrutable purposes the spirit is only to be discerned as it were in a distorting-glass. (The Book of God’s Madness) Chubb sought to persuade his readers in An Appendix of the verity of his solipsism by illustrating some examples of serendipitous events from his life. His aim is more on the mark when he excoriates the taboos and frustrations of modern life. The green green hills, the blue blue sky, blue sea, great golden SUN, yellow dandelions, the pink naked beauty of ripe boyhood, deathless free and happy, brimming with health. This I must have. Nothing less than this can ever satisfy me! GIVE ME MY HEAVEN! GIVE ME MY HEAVEN! (Water-Cherubs) Failing in health and facing continuing legal and financial difficulties, Ralph Chubb abandoned his controversial works in the mid-fifties, and began to collect and reprint his early poems and childhood memories. Treasure Trove and The Golden City (published posthumously) are devoid of the usual profusion of naked, lissome youths, but instead offer a glimpse into his youthful imagination, and some of his most charming poetry. In the final years of his life he donated his remaining volumes to the national libraries of Britain. He died peacefully at Fair Oak Cottage in Hampshire and was buried next to his parents at the Kingsclere Woodland Church. Chubb’s own assessment of his work conforms to the general critical reaction: I do not necessarily claim to be a great artist or writer; but I claim to be a true spirit– this is a subtler test. Seek me out; but you may not find me. (An Appendix) Works * None of the editions of Chubb’s books exceed more than 200 copies, and some of his lithographed masterworks exist in only 30 or 40 copies, of which a mere 6 or 7 are meticulously hand-colored by Chubb. * The dates and titles of Chubb’s printed works are given below. Early typeset works * 1924 Manhood * 1924 The Sacrifice of Youth * 1925 A Fable of Love & War * 1927 The Cloud & the Voice * 1928 Woodcuts * 1928 The Book of God’s Madness * 1929 An Appendix (duplicated hand-written text) Lithographed texts * 1930 Songs of Mankind * 1931 The Sun Spirit * 1934 The Heavenly Cupid * 1935 Songs Pastoral and Paradisal (illustrated by Vincent Stuart; script by Helen Hinkley) * 1936 Water Cherubs * 1939 The Secret Country Post-war prophetic texts * 1948 The Child of Dawn * 1953 Flames of Sunrise Juvenalia and early romances * 1957 Treasure Trove * 1960 The Golden City Posthumous works * 1965 The Day of St Alban * 1970 Autumn Leaves References and further reading * Cave, Roderick (1960). In Blake’s Tradition: the Press of Ralph Chubb. The American Book Collector. 11 (2), p8-17 * Cave, Roderick (1960). 'Blake’s Mantle’, a Memoir of Ralph Chubb. Book Design and Production. 3 (2), p24-8 * D’Arch Smith, Timothy (1970). Love in Earnest. London: Routledge & Kegan Paul. * Rahman, Tariq (1991). Ephebophilia and the Creation of a Spiritual Myth in the Works of Ralph Nicholas Chubb. Journal of Homosexuality. 20 (1-2), p103-127 * Reid, Anthony (1970). Ralph Chubb: The Unknown. Reprinted from The Private Library. 3 (3-4). References Wikipedia—https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ralph_Chubb

George Frederick Cameron (24 September 1854– 17 September 1885) was a Canadian poet, lawyer, and journalist, best known for the libretto for the operetta Leo, the Royal Cadet. He moved to Boston in April 1869. He graduated from the Boston University School of Law in 1877. He worked for the law firm Dean, Butler and Abbot of Boston from 1877 to 1882. He contributed poetry to Boston periodicals, including the Courier and the Transcript. In fall 1882 he enrolled in Queen’s College in Kingston, Ontario where he won a poetry prize in 1883 for “Adelphi.” He is sometimes considered one of the Confederation Poets.

Maryann Corbett (née Zillotti, Washington, D.C.) is an American poet, medievalist, and linguist.She grew up in northern Virginia. She did her undergraduate work at the College of William and Mary in Williamsburg, Virginia, and graduated with a doctorate in English from the University of Minnesota.Her work has appeared in Southwest Review, Barrow Street, Rattle, River Styx, Atlanta Review, The Evansville Review, Measure, Literary Imagination, The Dark Horse, Italian Americana, Mezzo Cammin, Linebreak, Subtropics, Verse Daily, American Life in Poetry, The Poetry Foundation, The Writer’s Almanac, and many other venues in print and online, as well as an assortment of anthologies, including The Best American Poetry 2018. She has been a several-time Pushcart and Best of the Net nominee; a finalist for the 2009 Morton Marr Prize, the 2010 Best of the Net anthology, and the 2011 and 2016 Able Muse Book Prize; and a winner of the Lyric Memorial Award, the Willis Barnstone Translation Prize, and the Richard Wilbur Award. Her third book, Mid Evil, is the Wilbur Award winner and has been published by the University of Evansville Press.She has worked as a writing teacher and indexer for the Minnesota Legislature. She lives in St. Paul, Minnesota.

Thomas Carlyle (4 December 1795 – 5 February 1881) was a Scottish essayist, historian, and philosopher from the Scottish Lowlands. A leading writer of the Victorian era, he exerted a profound influence on 19th-century art, literature, and philosophy. Born in Ecclefechan, Dumfriesshire, Scotland, Carlyle attended the University of Edinburgh where he excelled in mathematics, inventing the Carlyle circle. After finishing the arts course, he prepared to become a minister in the Burgher Church while working as a schoolmaster. He quit these and several other endeavours before settling on literature, writing for the Edinburgh Encyclopædia and working as a translator. Carlyle occupied a central position in Victorian culture, being considered not only, in the words of Ralph Waldo Emerson, the “undoubted head of English letters”, but a “secular prophet”. Posthumously, his reputation suffered as publications by his friend and disciple James Anthony Froude provoked controversy about Carlyle's personal life, particularly his marriage to Jane Welsh Carlyle. His reputation further declined in the 20th century, as the onsets of World War I and World War II brought forth accusations that he was a progenitor of both Prussianism and fascism. Since the 1950s, extensive scholarship in the field of Carlyle studies has improved his standing, and he is now recognised as “one of the enduring monuments of our literature who, quite simply, cannot be spared.”