Day-Lewis, Cecil

(1904-1972)

   Born at Ballintubbert, County Laois, Ireland, the only child of the Rev. Frank Cecil Day-Lewis, Church of Ireland curate, he lived most of his life in England. He was educated at Sherborne School and Dorset and Wadham College, Oxford, where he became associated with a group of left-wing poets led by W.H. Auden, with whom he edited Oxford Poetry (1927). Lewis was a member of the Communist party from 1935 to 1938 and wrote for the Left Review. His early poetry focuses on social themes. His collection of essays is noteworthy. He wrote detective stories under the pseudonym of "Nicholas Blake." He was professor of poetry at Oxford from 1951 to 1956 and poet laureate of Great Britain from 1967 to 1972. He is buried at Stinsford in Dorset, only a few feet from Thomas Hardy's grave. Some of his publications: Transitional Poem, 1929. A Hope for Poetry, 1934. Translation of Virgil's Aeneid, 1952. The Buried Day, 1960 (autobiography). Some of his poems: "Do Not Expect Again a Phoenix Hour," "Flight to Italy," "From Feathers to Iron," "Dreams, O Destinations," "Overtures to Death," "Sheepdog Trials in Hyde Park."

   Sources: Chief Modern Poets of Britain and America. 5th edition. Gerald DeWitt Sanders and John Herbert Nelson, eds., Macmillan, 1970. Dictionary of National Biography. Electronic Edition 1.1. Oxford University Press, 1997. 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 Book of Twentieth-Century English Verse. Philip Larkin, ed. Oxford University Press, 1973. The Oxford Companion to English Literature. 6th edition. Margaret Drabble, ed. Oxford University Press, 2000.