Johnson, Lionel Pigot

(1867-1902)

   The son of an army officer, he was born at Broadstairs, Kent, but the family settled at Windsor Forest, Berkshire. He was educated at Winchester College, where he edited The Wykehamist, the school magazine, and won prizes for poetry and essay writing, one essay being "Fools of Shakespeare" published in Noctes Shakesperianæ (1887). After graduating literæ humaniores from New College, Oxford, in 1886, he became a review journalist for the Academy, Anti-Jacobin, National Observer, Daily Chron204 icle, and Pall Mall Gazette. The Art of Thomas Hardy was published in 1894 and Ireland and Other Poems in 1897. He died in St. Bartholomew's Hospital from a fall in Fleet Street and was buried at Kensal Green Cemetery, West London. His poems were published in Century Guild Hobby-Horse and in the first and second Book of the Rhymers' Club (1892-1894), and selections were published in the Vigo Cabinet series, 1908. Some of his poems: "Bagley Wood," "Dead," "In Memory," "July," "Oxford," "Poems from the Henn Manuscript," "The Age of a Dream," "The Dark Angel," "The Destroyer of a Soul," "The Precept of Silence."

   Sources: British Poetry 1880-1920: Edwardian Voices. Paul L. Wiley and Harold Orel, eds. Appleton-CenturyCrofts, 1969. Dictionary of National Biography. Electronic Edition 1.1. Oxford University Press, 1997. English Poetry: Author Search. Chadwyck-Healey Ltd., 1995 (http://www.lib.utexas.edu:8080/search/epoetry/author.html). Oldpoetry (www.oldpoetry.com). Poets' Corner - Index of Poets (http://www.theotherpages.org/poems/poem-gh.html). 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 Complete Poems of Lionel Johnson. Iain Fletcher, ed. The Unicorn Press, 1953. Victorian Literature: Poetry. Donald Gray and G.B. Tennyson, eds. Macmillan, 1976.