John Masefield

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Edward Masefield (1 June 1878-May 1967) was an English poet and writer as well as the United Kingdom's Poet Laureate from 1930 to 1967.

The children's books "The Midnight Folk" and The Box of Delights, as well as the poems "The Everlasting Mercy" and "Sea-Fever" are two of his most popular works.

Early life

Masefield was born in Ledbury, Herefordshire, to George Masefield, a solicitor, and his wife Caroline. Masefield's mother died before his sister was born at six years old, and his aunt moved to live with his aunt. Following a mental breakdown, his father died soon after. After an unhappy education at the King's School in Warwick (now known as Warwick School), where he lived from 1888 to 1891, he decided to study HMS Conway, a love of reading, which his aunt was not aware of. He spent several years onboard this ship and discovered that reading and writing were both a passion. Masefield's love of story-telling soared aboard the Conway. While onboard, he listened to the tales about sea lore, continued to read, and decided he wanted to become a writer and storyteller by himself. In his book New Chum, Masefield gives an account of life aboard the Conway.

The Gilcrux, which was intended for Chile, was boarded by Masefield in 1894. His first voyage brought him the joy of sea sickness, but his record of sailing through extreme weather reveals his delight in seeing flying fish, porpoises, and birds. On this journey, he was captivated by nature's beauty, as well as a rare glimpse of a nocturnal rainbow. On arriving in Chile, he died of sunstroke and was hospitalized. He eventually returned home to England as a passenger aboard a steamship.

Masefield returned to sea in 1895 on a windjammer destined for New York City. Nonetheless, the temptation to be a writer and the loneliness of life as a sailor overtook him, and in New York he jumped ship and travelled through the countryside. He lived as a vagrant for several months, drifting between odd jobs before returning to New York City and finding work as a barkeeper's assistant. He read the December issue of Truth, a New York periodical, that contained Duncan Campbell Scott's poem "The Piper of Arll." Masefield wrote to Scott ten years later to tell him what reading the book had meant to him:

Masefield worked at the huge Alexander Smith carpet factory in Yonkers, New York, where long hours were anticipated and the atmosphere was far from ideal. He read up to 20 books in a week and devoured both modern and classical literature. George du Maurier, Dumas, Thomas Browne, Hazlitt, Dickens, Kipling, and R. L. Stevenson all had different interests at the time, and his reading included works by George du Maurier, Dumas, Dumas, Thomas Browne, Hazlitt, Kipling, and R. L. Stevenson. Chaucer, as well as Keats and Shelley, became increasingly important to him during this period. Masefield travelled home to England as a passenger aboard a steamship in 1897.

Constance de la Cherois Crommelin, 20, was his future wife when Masefield was 23 years old in 1901, and he and his wife, Andrew Claude de la Cherois Crommelin, were married in Rockport, Northern Ireland, on February 1867. Despite the age gap between Constance and Constance, a classical and English Literature scholar, and a math teacher, Constance was a good match for him. The couple had two children, Judith, born Isabel Judith, 28 April 1904, London died in 1999, and Lewis Crommelin, born in London in 1940, died in combat, Africa, 29 May 1942.

Masefield was put in charge of the fine art section of the Arts and Industrial Exhibition in Wolverhampton, 1902. By then, his poems were being published in periodicals, and Salt-Water Ballads, his first collection of verse, was published in that year. It contained the poem "Sea-Fever." Captain Margaret (1908) and Multitude and Solitude (1909), the author's two novels. He wrote the first of his narrative poems in 1911, and "The Widow in the Bye Street" and "Dauber" were two of his first novels published within the next year. As a result, he became widely known to the public and was lauded by critics. In 1912, he was given the Edmond de Polignac Prize for the first time.

Masefield was old enough to be barred from military service when the First World War began in 1914, but he worked with the Hôpital Temporaire d'Arc-en-Barrois in Haute-Marne, serving a six-week term in 1915. He later published an account of his travels. About this time, Masefield's country began to withdraw from Buckinghamshire to Lollingdon Farm in Cholsey. Lollingdon Downs, which was a source of a number of poems and sonnets under the name Lollingdon Downs, and which his family used until 1917.

Masefield was invited to the United States for a three-month lecture tour after returning home. Although his primary aim was to lecture on English literature, he also wanted to gather intelligence on the mood and views of Americans regarding the war in Europe. When he returned to England, he wrote a report to the British Foreign Office, recommending that he write a book about the Allied effort in the Dardanelles that might be used in the United States to combat German propaganda. Gallipoli's resulting project was a success. Masefield later met with the head of British Military Intelligence in France and was asked to write an account of the Battle of the Somme. Despite Masefield's grand plans for his book, he was refused access to official records and what was supposed to be the preface was published as The Old Front Line, a tour of the Somme area.

Masefield, 1918, returned to America on his second lecture tour, spending a substantial portion of his time speaking and lecturing to American soldiers, who are waiting to be sent to Europe. These speaking engagements were extremely fruitful. After his lecture, a battalion of black soldiers danced and sang for him on one occasion. He matured as a public speaker and discovered his ability to touch the emotions of his audience by his style of speaking out, rather than from dry scripted addresses during this tour. Both Yale and Harvard Universities conferred honorary doctorates of letters on him toward the end of his tour.

Masefield began writing in the 1920s as an accomplished and respected writer. His family was able to settle on Boar's Hill, a somewhat rural setting not far from Oxford, where Masefield took up beekeeping, goat raising, and poultry keeping. He continued to sell: the first edition of his Collected Poems (1923) sold about 80,000 copies. Reynard The Fox (1920), a narrative poem, has been compared to Geoffrey Chaucer's work, but not necessarily to Masefield's credit. Right Royal and King Cole's poems, in which humanity and nature's relationship is highlighted, were followed.

Masefield, a King Cole, moved away from long poems and into novels after he was turned away from long poems to novels. He published 12 books between 1924 and 1939, ranging from tales of an imaginary land in Central America (Sard Harker, Odtaa) to children's fantasies (The Box of Delights). He produced a number of striking works in this same period. The majority of these were based on Christian themes, and Masefield, to his surprise, was banned from delivering plays on biblical topics that predate the Reformation and had been revived a decade earlier to prevent the production of Oscar Wilde's Salome. Nevertheless, a compromise was reached, and the First Performance of Christ, which took place in 1928, was the first performance to be staged in an English cathedral since the Middle Ages.

Masefield gave the British Academy's Shakespeare Lecture in 1921 and was awarded an honorary doctorate of literature from the University of Oxford. In 1923, he organized Oxford Recitations, an annual competition whose aim was to find good poets of verse and to promote "the beautiful speaking of poetry." Oxford Recitations were generally a success, considering the number of contestants, the event's promotion of natural speech in poetical recitations, and the number of people learning how to listen to poetry. In 1924, Masefield became a founding member of the Scottish Association for the Speaking of Verse. He later wondered if the Oxford celebrations should be run as a contest, and that they might better be run as a festival. However, Oxford Recitations came to an end in 1929, after he broke with the competitive element. On the other hand, the Speaking of Verse Association in Scotland grew in importance thanks to the influence of associated figures like Marion Angus and Hugh MacDiarmid, which also exists today as the Poetry Association of Scotland.

A new Poet Laureate was needed in 1930, on the death of Robert Bridges. Ramsay MacDonald, the Prime Minister of the United Kingdom, appointed Masefield, who stayed in the post until his death in 1967. Alfred, Lord Tennyson, was the only one to hold the office for a longer period. On his appointment, The Times said of him: "his poetry could bring to life the plain speech of everyday life." Masefield took seriously his appointment and wrote a large number of poems for royal occasions, which were sent to The Times for publication. Masefield's modesty was shown by his use of a stamped and self-addressed envelope with each submission, ensuring that the poem could be returned if it was found to be ineffective. He was hired to write a poem for be set to music by King's Musick, Sir Edward Elgar, and appeared at the unveiling of the Queen Alexandra Memorial by the King on June 8, 1932. "There are so many true Princesses who have passed away," the ode reads.

Masefield's appointment was given the Order of Merit by King George V. and a number of honorary degrees from British universities. He was elected President of the Society of Authors in 1937. Masefield supported English literature and poetry, and began receiving the Royal Medals for Poetry for the first or second published edition of poems by a poet under the age of 35. In addition, his speaking engagements led him further away, often on longer tours, yet he continued to produce significant amounts of work in a variety of fields. He now added autobiography, produced New Chum, In the Mill, and So Long to Learn.

Masefield slowed his pace not until he was approaching 70, owing to sickness. Constance died at the age of 93 in 1960 after a long illness. Even though her death was sad, he had spent a grueling year watching the woman he loved die. He remained Poet Laureate as well as other things. His last book, Glad Thanksgiving, was published when he was 88 years old.

Masefield's ankle pains started in late 1966. His leg was infected with the disease, and he died of the disease on May 12th, 1967. He was cremated and his ashes were laid in Westminster Abbey's Poets' Corner, as per his stated wishes. However, Masefield's "Heirs, Admin, and Assigns" was discovered later, but the following verse was not revealed later.

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