Shaw, George Bernard
Poetry
Yeats, William Butler
1865-1939
William Butler Yeats was born near Dublin, Ireland, and spent most of his childhood in Sligo, on the northwest coast of Ireland. As a child, Yeats became aware of traditional Irish legends, which later would protrude in his poetry. Through his childhood, Yeats was educated in London and in Dublin because his father moved them often. School followed him into being an art student and then into writing. A year after Yeats moved to London in 1887, he published his first book of poetry, The Wanderings of Oisin, a book which was published in hope that it would bring the Irish people closer to their past. Five years later, in 1892, Yeats produced one of his first most popular plays, The Countless Cathleen and the year later he published another book of poetry, The Celtic Twilight, which was also about Irish legends. Yeats waited only two years to produce his second popular play, The Land of Heart´s Desire and another year for his other book of poems simply called Poems (1895). In the following year, Yeats and Lady Gregory joined together to create a National Theatre for the Irish. When he returned to Ireland in 1896, Yeats devoted his entire time to the arts and constructing the newly thought of Abbey Theater. In 1903, he produced yet another popular play, Cathleen ni Houlihan. Other works by Yeats include Responsibilities (1914), A Vision (1925), The Tower (1928), The Winding Stair (1929) and A Full Moon in March (1935). One of Yeats´ greater accomplishments was held in 1923 when he won the Nobel Prize for Literature and he was given the task of a senator of the Irish Free State from 1922 until 1928. After his death at age 74, Yeats´ Collected Poems was published in 1950.
Frost, Robert
1874-1963
Robert Lee Frost was born on March 26, 1875 in San Fransisco, California. His father was from New England and his mother was a Scottish teacher. At age 11, Frost´s father died and the family moved to Lawrence, Massachusetts. Frost attended school at Lawrence High School where he met his sweetheart, and future wife, Elinor White. His first poetry was published in the Lawrence High School Bulletin. Frost attended Dartmouth College but remained there for less than one semester. He returned to Massachusetts to teach and work in a mill. He married Elinor in 1895, and they both began to teach in a private school that Frost´s mother had started. Frost tried university again, this time at Harvard but had about the same success as at Dartmouth. Frost and his wife moved to a farm in New Hampshire where Frost wrote (but rarely published) poetry for ten years. At the age of 38, Frost sold the farm and took his family to England. There, Frost created A Boy´s Will(1913) and North of Boston(1914). The Frosts returned back to America in 1915 and bought yet another farm in New Hamsphire. American editions of Frosts first two books came out in 1916 as well as his new one, Mountain Interval. Frost began to teach once again and helped found the Bread Loaf School of English at Middlebury College. In 1924, Frost receive the first of his four Pulitzer prizes for poetry. In 1938, Elinor Frost died. Frost sold the house and farm and moved to Boston. There, he taught at Harvard as the Ralph Waldo Emerson Fellow in Poetry. In 1960, Frost read a poem at President Kennedy´s inauguration ceremony. He was the first poet ever to do so. Frost died January 29, 1963 in Boston after four Pulitzer prizes and almost every literary prize imaginable. His poetry is traditional and yet experimental at the same time. Although he stated that he would "sooner play tennis without a net than write free verse", Frost used rhythm, meter, vocabulary, and inflections of everyday speech and interplay.
de la Mare, Walter
1873-1956
Walter de la Mare was born in 1873. In 1902, at age 29, de la Mare published his first book of poetry, Songs of Chilhood. Other books de la Mare published include Memoirs of a Midget in 1921, and Poems 1919-1934 in 1935. Walter de la Mare died at age 83.
Lawrence, D. H.
1885-1930
Born in Eastwood, Nottinghamshire, central England, his father was a coal miner and his mother was a school teacher. He studied at University College, Nottingham, were he became a schoolmaster. However, because of the reasonable success of his first novel, The White Peacock, in 1911, and illness, he took his chances at writing. In 1914, David Herbert Richard Lawrence married Frieda von Richthofen, the wife of one of Lawrence´s professors from Nottingham. During the age of 27 to his death of tuberculosis at age 45, Lawrence and his wife spent most of their time abroad in Italy, Australia, and New Mexico. Before the coming of World War I, the English social and literary world had accepted Lawrence as a genius in progress. When the war broke out, the Lawrences returned to England and Lawrence published The Rainbow (1915). Four years later, the Lawrences moved to Italy for the following three years. There Lawrence published Women in Love in 1920. In 1922, the Lawrences moved to Mexico, published Aaron´s Rod (1922) and Kangaroo (1923), and returned to Italy in 1925. Three years later, Lawrence published Lady Chaterley´s Lover privately in Florence. Copies of Lady Chaterley´s Lover were confiscated from the United Kingdom until a trial in 1960. During the last year´s of his life, Lawrence published The Plumed Serpent (1926) and collected poems in 1928.
Sassoon, Seigried
1886-1967
Siegried Lorraine Sassoon was born in Brenchley, Kent, England, into a wealthy family. In his early years his education took place at Clare College and Cambridge University. Before WWI, until the age of 28, Sassoon led the life of a prosperous and leisurely English country gentleman. When the war broke out, Sassoon was summoned and did his service for his country. A year before the war ended in 1918, Sasson published The Old Huntsman, another book of poems. During his service in the war, Sassoon developed a hatred for all wars. This hatred was expressed in 1918 when he published Counterattack and then eight years later with Satirical Poems. Several of Sassoon´s other works included autobiographies, such as Memoirs of a Fox-Hunting Man in 1928. In 1957, Sassoon became a Catholic and his poetry, before and after this event, became very devotional. Sassoon died at age 81.
Brooke, Robert
1887-1915
Rupert Chawner Brooke was born in Rugby, Warwickshire, England and later studied at Cambridge. Brooke loved to travel and it was on his way to Dardanelles, an order by a superior, when he died, and was buried there. Brooke wrote many poems which were published in his books Poems (1911 and 1914) and a posthumous work, Other Poems (1915).
Muir, Edwin
1887-1959
Edwin Muir was born in Deerness, Orkney Islands, northeast of Scotland. Muir lived on his father´s farm where he learned much about the culture of the islands; a culture that would later emerge in his writings. In Scotland, Muir was educated at Kirkwall until he was thirteen. It was at this time that his family moved to Glasgow and he quit school in order to educate himself. In 1919, Muir married novelist and critic Willa Anderson and shortly thereafter they moved to London together where he worked as a teacher and journalist. From 1921 to 1924, Muir and his wife traveled through mainland Europe where they translated a number of works by European writers, including Franz Kafka. Through his life, Muir also worked in Rome, Scotland and Harvard. A further accomplishment was the publishing of several of his books of poetry including The Voyage (1946) and The Labyrinth (1949). Other writings of Muir´s include studies of John Knox and D.H. Lawrence as well as an autobiography in 1954.
Sitwell, Edith
1887-1964
Dame Edith Sitwell was born in Scarborough, North Yorkshire, N. England, UK. A poet who first received attention by editing an annual anthology of new poetry, Dame´s own experimental poetry was very controversial. Noted for her use of satirical wit, her best known work is simply called Façade. It was set to music by Sir William Walton but was stilled received uneasily by the public. She attempted to use new rhythms and images much like the modern art of the time. Such nonconformity to the older ways of poetry was the source of the controversy surrounding her. In her final years, her poetry took on a more religious and reflective tone, notably following her becoming a Catholic. Her death in 1964 was followed by the posthumous publication of her autobiography Taken Care Of in 1965.
Bishop, Elizabeth
1911-1979
Elizabeth Bishop was born in Worcester, Massachusetts and was educated at Vassar College. Through her years after college, she travelled considerably in Europe and then settled down to live in New York, Key West, Florida, and then later Brazil for 16 years. She also taught briefly at the University of Washington, Harvard, New York University and in the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. During her life she published many books which include North and South (1946), Poems (1955), Questions of Travels (1965), The Complete Poems (1969), and Geography II (1976). Among her many awards that she received from her writings, she won a particular one, the Books Abroad/Neustadt Prize for Literature, which made her the first American and the first woman to receive it. After her death at age 68, her posthumous works included The Complete Poems, 1927-1979 (1983), and The Collected Prose (1984).
Eliot, T. S.
1888 - 1965
Thomas Stearns Eliot was born in St. Louis, Missouri to an old Massachusetts and Unitarian family. Thomas entered the Smith Academy, in 1898. It was here that his first published poem appeared in 1905, in the Smith Academy Record. Following a year at Milton Academy in Massachusetts, Eliot attended Harvard and earned his B.A. degree. He went on to study philosophy at Harvard as well as the University of Paris, Marburg University in Germany, and Oxford University in England. World War I kept Eliot in England where he would remain a citizen for the rest of his life. He married, and worked as a teacher and a bank clerk as well as a book reviewer and editor for both the Egoist and Criterion magazines. After joining the Church of England in 1927, Eliot wrote the poem Ash Wednesday. It was his poems entitled Four Quartets, published nine years later, that marked the end of his major work as a poet. In his later years, Eliot turned more to writing plays, essays and books. This included Notes Toward a Definition on Culture and The Aims of Education. His play, The Cocktail Party, was widely popular although his previous play, Murder in the Cathedral, was closer in style to poetic drama. Before his death, Eliot received the Nobel Prize for Literature.
Owen, Wilfred
1893-1918
Wilfred Owen was born near Oswestry, Shropshire, WC England, UK. Owen studied at the Birkenhead Institute and the Shrewsbury Technical School, and then left England to teach English in Bordeaux, where he began writing. Despite poor health he enlisted in the army in 1915 and experienced the horrors of trench warfare firsthand. He was injured in 1917 and was hospitalised near Edinburgh, England for recuperation. It was in Edinburgh that he met Sassoon, Seigfried. Sassoon encouraged Owen to continue writing his poetry. Owen´s poetry, like Sassoon, was unsparing in his details of the devastation of war. They expressed the cruelty and waste as well as the emotional horror of warfare. His great literature, however, was due to his use of slant rhyme and consonance which would go on to be developed by poets of the following decade. Owen returned to duty and was killed in action on the Western Front on his return to France, a week before the armistice.
Graves, Robert
1895-1985
Robert Graves was born in London, England. Robert enlisted in the service in 1914 and served with Sassoon, Seigfried. He was wounded and later suffered shell shock. It wasn´t until after the war that he became a poet. He experimented with a wide variety of verse forms which included folk songs and ballads and employed highly subtle and complex metaphors. He evolved the theory of "non-literary" poetry as well as writing novels I, Claudius and Claudius the God, both of which involved ancient Rome. As a scholar of classical nature, Graves translated Homer´s Iliad and wrote The Greek Myths. His published poetry books include Mock Beggar Hall, The Penny Fiddle, and Poems for Children.
Auden, W. H.
1907-1973
Wystan Hugh Auden was born in York, England and later studied at Oxford. Through the period of his life, Auden taught, travelled , wrote plays, and moved to New York City in 1939 and became a U.S. citizen in 1946. In the U.S., Auden taught at many schools and also became known as a humanist poet with writings like Homage to Clio (1960). In 1972, Auden returned to England.
MacNeicce, Louis
1907-1963
Louis MacNeice was born in Belfast and later studied at Oxford and became a lecturer. MacNeice became affiliated with Auden and many other British left-wing poets. In 1937, MacNeice published Letters from Iceland, with Auden. Other works to follow were Blind Fireworks (1929), Collected Poems (1949), and Solstices (1961). Other works included verse plays for radio and translations including Aeschylus and Goethe&3180;s Faust. MacNeice died at age 56.
Spender, Stephen
1909-1995
Until his recent death, Stephen Harold Spender was a renowned poet and critic born in London, England. While studying at Oxford in the 1930´s he joined a group with other modern poets such as Auden and Day-Lewis. Throughout his life his works include Poems from Spain (1939), Ruins and Visions (1942), The Generous Days (1971), and Collected Poems, 1928--85 (1985). In 1983, Spender was knighted and later died at the age of 86.
Thomas, Dylan
1914 -1953
Dylan Marlais Thomas was born in Swansea, Wales, Great Britan. In his early adulthood, Thomas worked as a journalist and published Eighteen Poems in 1934. In 1936, Thomas married Caitlin Macnamara and published Twenty-Five Poems. Other works during the period of his life include Collected Poems (1953), Under Milk Wood (1954), and Adventures in the Skin Trade (1955). Before his death, Thomas became an alcoholic and died at age 39.
Larkin, Philip
1922-1985
Philip Arthur Larkin was born in Coventry, England and was educated at Oxford. Larkin began his career as a writter with two collections of poetry, Poetry from Oxford in Wartime (1944), and The North Ship (1945). His poetry was followed by the only two novels Larkin ever published, Jill (1946), and A Girl in Winter (1947). In 1955, Larkin became a librarian at the University of Hull and continued to publish his poetry. His other books include The Less Deceived (1955), The Whitsun Weddings (1964) and High Windows (1974). After his death at age 63, posthumous works include Collected Poems (1988), All What Jazz?(1970), a collection of articles on jazz, and Required Writing (1983).
Gunn, Thom
1929-
Thomson William Gunn, or Thom Gunn as he is more commonly referred to as, was born in Gravesend, Kent, SE England, UK. Educated at Cambridge and Stanford, Gunn is one of the youngest writers belonging to "The Movement", a group of poets whose ideals conflict with the drama and intensity of Romanticism and instead stress writing poetry about everyday experiences and changes. From 1958 onto 1966 he was a teacher of English at the University of California at Berkeley. His poems, often erotic in content, are intriguing in their variety of regular and free forms. A major theme that runs throughout his writings is the necessity for action in a word of uncertainties. His volumes of works include Fighting Terms, Jack Straw's Castle, The Passages of Joy, and The Man With Night Sweats.
Hughes, Ted
1930-
Edward James Hughes, or Ted Hughes as was his popular name, was born in Mytholmroyd, West Yorkshire, N. England, UK. He studied at Cambridge and began writing poetry that stood apart from the standard of his time. His work often invokes the dark side of nature, stressing the ferocious and demonic as opposed to the opulent and beautiful. Hughes looked at humans like other animals, all just following the instinctive desire to ensure personal survival. In this parallel he hoped to find an understanding of humanity and its bond with the world around it. Hughes is also known for his marriage to the famous and distraught U.S. poet, Sylvia Plath. Following her death he edited her Collected Poems. His published works include The Hawk in the Rain, Lupercal, Rain Charm for the Duchy and Tales from Ovid. He has also written numerous works for children such as Meet my Folks and Earth Owl.
Drama
Shaw, George Bernard
1856-1950
George Bernard Shaw was born in Dublin, Ireland. Attending school sporadically, Shaw strongly felt that he gained nothing from formal education. Up until his early twenties, he relied heavily on his mother for support while he spent time reading, visiting museums, and writing unsuccessful novels. In 1885, he was secured a position as an act critic through his friend William Archer, despite having no credentials or previous experience. Three years later, he began writing music critiques under the name of Corno Di Bassetto, an occupation he maintained until 1894. Although Shaw was also an amateur in this field, his critiques on music remained some of the most distinguished of the nineteenth century.
In 1885 he began to write plays. His early successes included Arms and the Man, Candida and The Devil´s Disciple. His dramas dealt with contemporary social problems, many of which were considered unmentionable and unsuitable for the stage. Despite small audiences, Shaw continued to write plays. Numerous writings followed including Major Barbara, The Doctor´s Dilemma, Androcles and the Lion and Pygmalion. Many others also became quite famous and soon Shaw earned a respectable reputation. His plays differed from those before him not only in content but in method as well. Shaw believed that plot was a detail and character development was the heart of play writting. He was quoted as saying that he never considered plot when he wrote but instead let it unfold as he invented the people and added depth to their personalities. In 1925 Shaw was awarded the Nobel Prize for literature and by the time of his death he had established himself as the foremost English playwright of his time.
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