In the smoky literary salons of early twentieth-century London, few figures loomed larger than John Collings Squire, a man whose influence extended far beyond his own considerable poetic output to shape an entire generation of English letters. Born on April 2, 1884, in Plymouth, Devon, Squire would become one of the most powerful literary editors of his age, a respected poet in his own right, and a lightning rod for…
“God heard the embattled nations sing and shout 'Gott strafe England' and 'God save the King!' God this, God that, and God the other thing—'Good God!' said God, 'I've got my work cut out!”
Neighbourhood:
Edwardian Poets, Georgian Poets, Modernist Poets
Emotional landscape: Spirituality, Sorrow, Wonder
Anne Knish, credited in some accounts with the dates 1916–1917, was not a historical poet in the ordinary biographical sense. She had no childhood, family, home town, education, intimate correspondence, or grave. Rather, she was a deliberately invented literary identity, one of the central masks in the Spectra hoax, a remarkable episode in American poetry during the first years of modernism. The name “Anne Knish” bel…
Neighbourhood:
American Poets, Imagist Poets, Light Verse Poets, Modernist Poets, Symbolist Poets
Emotional landscape: Fear, Sorrow, Despair