Monkhouse, William Cosmo

(1840-1901)

   Born in London, the son of a solicitor and a mother of Huguenot descent, he was educated at St. Paul's School. In his career at the Board of Trade, he worked his way up to assistant secretary of the finance department. From 1894 to 1896 he was a member of the committee on the Mercantile Marine Fund. In 1869 he published Masterpieces of English Art and in 1877 a Handbook of Précis Writing. "As a critic he had the happy faculty of conveying a well-considered and weighty opinion without suggesting superiority or patronage" (DNB). He wrote many poems, including limericks. He died at Skegness, Lincolnshire. Some of his poetry publications: A Dream of Idleness, and Other Poems, 1865. Corn and Poppies, 1890. The Christ Upon the Hill: A Ballad, 1895. Nonsense Rhymes, 1901. Pasiteles the Elder and Other Poems, 1901. Some of his limerick/poems: "A Lady There was of Antigua," "The Poor Benighted Hindoo," "There Once was a Girl of New York," "There was a Young Girl of Lahore," "There Was a Young Lady of Niger," "There was a Young Lady of Riga," "There were Three Young Women of Birmingham."

   Sources: A Century of Humorous Verse, 1850-1950. Roger Lancelyn Green, ed. E.P. Dutton (Everyman's Library), 1959. Book-Song. Gleeson White, ed. Elliot Stock, 1893. Dictionary of National Biography. Electronic Edition 1.1. Oxford University Press, 1997. Invitation to Poetry: A Round of Poems from John Skelton to Dylan Thomas. Lloyd Frankenberg, Doubleday, 1956. The National Portrait Gallery (www.npg.org.uk). 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 New Oxford Book of Victorian Verse. Christopher Ricks, ed. Oxford University Press, 1987.