Austin, Alfred

(1835-1913)

   Yorkshire poet laureate. He abandoned law for literature, though his first efforts at prose and poetry were not very successful. He was journalist and special correspondent abroad, and from 1883 to 1895, editor of the National Review, the first four years jointly with William John Courthope. He maintained that for a poem to be great it had to an epic or dramatic romance on a theme combining love, patriotism, and religion. Between 1871 and 1908 he published twenty volumes of verse; his poems are a mixture of good and bad. He seems never to have come out from under the shadow of Scott and Byron. Some of his poems: "Agatha," "At His Grave," "Is Life worth living?" "Love's Blindness," "The Haymakers' Song."

   Sources: Dictionary of National Biography. Electronic Edition 1.1. Oxford University Press, 1997. Encyclopædia Britannica Ultimate Reference Suite DVD, 2006. English Poetry: Author Search. Chadwyck-Healey Ltd., 1995 (http://www. lib.utexas.edu:8080/search/epoetry/author.html). Great Books Online (www.bartleby.com). Poemhunter (www.poemhunter.com). 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.