Brooke, Rupert Chawner

(1887-1915)

   From Rugby (where his father taught classics) Brooke went to King's College, Cambridge, in 1906 and became a member of the Apostles, an intellectual society founded during the 1820s with Ten46 nyson and Arthur Hallam among its members. He studied in Germany and traveled in Italy, the United States, Canada, and the South Seas. He was already an established and prolific poet before he wrote his war poetry; Poems was published in 1911. On the outbreak of World War I he joined the Royal Naval Volunteer Reserve, and on the way to the Dardanelles he died of septicemia on a hospital ship and was buried in an olive grove on the island of Skyros. His best-known work is the wartime sonnet sequence 1914 and Other Poems (1915), which brought him posthumous fame. One of his most popular sonnets, "The Soldier," begins with the familiar line: "If I should die, think only this of me." Brooke began writing poetry at age nine and composed some prize-winning verse in "The Pyramids" and "The Bastille" while at Rugby School. Some of his other poems: "Beauty and Beauty," "Clouds," "Dawn," "Dining-Room Tea," "Doubts," "The Hill," "The Life Beyond," "The Vision of the Archangels."

   Sources: Dictionary of National Biography. Electronic Edition 1.1. Oxford University Press, 1997. Encyclopædia Britannica Ultimate Reference Suite DVD, 2006. The Collected Poems of Rupert Brooke. Kessinger Publishing Co. 2005. The Columbia Granger's Index to Poetry. 11th ed. The Columbia Granger's World of Poetry, Columbia University Press, 2005 (http://www.columbiagrangers.org). The National Portrait Gallery (www.npg.org.uk). The Oxford Companion to English Literature. 6th edition. Margaret Drabble, ed. Oxford University Press, 2000. Westminster Abbey Official Guide (no date).