Hewlett, Maurice Henry

(1861-1923)

   He was born at Weybridge, Surrey, of French descent; his family were possibly Huguenot refugees. His father had the appointment of keeper of His Majesty's land revenue records. Called to the bar in 1890, he too became keeper of land revenue records, from 1897 to 1901. The success of his romantic novel of the Middle Ages, The Forest Lovers (1898), made him famous and he left law to concentrate on writing. He joined the Fabian Society in 1917 and worked on a report on wages for the Board of Agriculture. He died at Broadchalke, Salisbury. His writing career is in three phases: 1898-1904, mainly Italian and historical romances; 1904-1914, Regency novels and stories of modern life; 1914-1923, essays and poetry. Some of his poetry publications: The Masque of Dead Florentines, 1895. Artemision, 1909. The Song of the Plow, 1916. The Village Wife's Lament, 1918. Some of his poems: "Ariadne Forsaken," "Ballad of Clytié," "Canzone of Hymnia's Coronation," "Eros Narcissus," "Ode to the Dawn of Italy," "Prometheus," "Shakespeare in Church," "The Cretan Ode," "War-Songs for the English," "White Flowers."

   Sources: Dictionary of National Biography. Electronic Edition 1.1. Oxford University Press, 1997. Songs and Meditations by Maurice Hewlett. Archibald Constable and Co., 1896. 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. Wikipedia, the Free Encyclopedia (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia).