“A poet is always a man of inordinate ambition and of inordinate vanity…” — John Davidson

“A poet is always a man of inordinate ambition and of inordinate vanity. In his heart he says, I want my poetry to be remembered when Homer and Dante and Shakespeare are forgotten.”

On the grand and self-regarding ambitions of the true poet · A Rosary

John Davidson

About John Davidson

11 April 1857–23 March 1909

John Davidson was born on 11 April 1857 in Barrhead, Renfrewshire, and died on 23 March 1909, or shortly thereafter, in the waters off Penzance, Cornwall. He was a Scottish poet, playwright, novelist, critic, journalist, and tireless literary experimenter whose work stands at a crucial threshold in British writing. In…

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