Milnes, Richard Monckton, 1st Baron Houghton

(1809-1885)

   Born in London, he graduated M.A. from Trinity College, Cambridge, in 1831, where he was one of the "Apostles" (see Rupert Brooke). He became Conservative member of Parliament for the Yorkshire constituency of Pontefract in 1837 and worked for several reforms, including the protection of copyright. He supported many poets by securing pensions for them; Tennyson is one. In 1848 he published Life and Letters of Keats and in 1855, in The Times, a poem on the English graves at Scutari. He was made a baron in the House of Lords in 1863 and supported the reform of the franchise. In 1869 he represented the Royal Geographical Society at the opening of the Suez Canal. Oxford, Cambridge and Edinburgh universities awarded him honorary degrees. He died at Vichy, Southern France, and was buried at Fryston, North Yorkshire. His Poetical Works was published in 1876. Some of his poems: "Columbus and the Mayflower," "Corfu," "England and America, 1863," "The Brookside," "The Burden of Egypt," "The Funeral of Napoleon," "The Ionian Islands," "Crimean Invalid Soldiers Reaping at Aldershot," "Good Night and Good Morning."

   Sources: A Second Treasury of the Familiar. Ralph L. Woods, ed. Macmillan, 1950. 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). Poems of American History. Burton Egbert Stevenson, ed. Houghton Mifflin, 1922. The Book of a Thousand Poems: A Family Treasury. J. Murray Macbain, ed. Peter Bedrick Books, 1983. 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 Home Book of Verse. Burton Egbert Stevenson, ed. New York: Henry Holt and Company, 1953. The Oxford Book of Travel Verse. Kevin Crossley-Holland, ed. Oxford University Press, 1986. The Oxford Companion to English Literature. 6th edition. Margaret Drabble, ed. Oxford University Press, 2000.