Grigson, Geoffrey Edward Harvey

(1905-1985)

   Born in Pelynt, Cornwall, the son of the local vicar, his autobiography The Crest on the Silver (1950) describes his unhappy childhood and adolescence. He graduated from St. Edmund Hall, Oxford, in 1927. Three of his brothers were killed in World War I and three in World War II. He worked on the Yorkshire Post, then the Morning Post, where he became literary editor; he also founded the influential British poetry magazine New Verse. During the war he worked for the BBC, thereafter as a free lancer. In 1972 he received the Duff Cooper memorial prize for a volume of poems. Much of his poetry celebrates his native Cornwall. He made his home in Broad Town, Wiltshire, were he died and is buried. Some of his poetry publications: Several Observations, 1939. Collected Poems 1924-1962, 1963. Angles and Circles and Other Poems, 1974. Collected Poems 1963-1980, 1984. Some of his poems: "Above the High," "An Administrator," "And Forgetful of Europe," "Bibliotheca Bodleiana," "Death of a Farmyard," "Hardy's Plymouth," "June in Wiltshire," "On a Lover of Books," "To Wystan Auden."

   Sources: Dictionary of National Biography. Electronic Edition 1.1. Oxford University Press, 1997. Encyclopædia Britannica Ultimate Reference Suite DVD, 2006. English Love Poems. John Betjeman and Geoffrey Taylor, eds. Faber and Faber, 1957. The Columbia Granger's Index to Poetry. 11th ed (http://www.columbiagrangers.org). Index to Poetry, 11th ed (http://www.columbiagrangers.org). The Faber Book of Epigrams and Epitaphs. Geoffrey Grigson, ed. Faber and Faber, 1977. The Gambit Book of Love Poems. Geoffrey Grigson, ed. Gambit, 1973. The National Portrait Gallery (www.npg.org.uk). The Oxford Companion to English Literature. 6th edition. Margaret Drabble, ed. Oxford University Press, 2000. Wikipedia, the Free Encyclopedia (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia).