Traill, Henry Duff

(1842-1900)

   Born at Morden Hill, Blackheath, London, he was educated at Merchant Taylors' School and at St. John's College, Oxford, and was called to the bar of the Inner Temple in 1869. From 1873 until he died he was a distinguished journalist, with the Pall Mall Gazette, the St. James's Gazette, the Saturday Review-contributing political "leaders," literary reviews, essays and poems. He was chief political leader-writer for the Daily Telegraph, editor of the Observer, and first editor of Literature. He published books on a variety of historical, literary, and political subjects, as well as biographies, and was editor of the six volumes of Social England from 1893 to 1897. England, Egypt, and the Sudan was published posthumously in 1900. He died of a heart attack and was buried in the Paddington Cemetery, Kilburn. Some of his poetry publications: Saturday Songs, 1890. Recaptured Rhymes, 1882. Number Twenty, 1892. The Baby of the Future, 1911. Some of his poems: "A Manly Protest," "After Dilettante Concetti," "An Enfant Terrible," "Tea Without Toast," "The Ants' Nest," "The Passing of the Aged Psychopath," "The Puss and the Boots."

   Sources: A Century of Humorous Verse, 1850-1950. Roger Lancelyn Green, ed. E.P. Dutton (Everyman's Library), 1959. Dictionary of National Biography. Electronic Edition 1.1. Oxford University Press, 1997. English Poetry: Author Search. Chadwyck-Healey Ltd., 1995 (http://www.lib.utexas.edu:8080/search/epoetry/author.html). The National Portrait Gallery. (www.npg.org.uk). Parodies: An Antholog y from Chaucer to Beerbohm - and After. Dwight Macdonald, ed. Modern Library, 1960. The Columbia Granger's Index to Poetry. 11th ed. The Columbia Granger's World of Poetry, Columbia University Press, 2005 (http://www.columbiagrangers.org).