Newbolt, Sir Henry John

(1862-1938)

   Born in Bilston, Staffordshire, the son of a clergyman, he was educated at Clifton Theological College and graduated from Corpus Christi College, Oxford, in 1881. Called to the bar by Lincoln's Inn, in 1887 he practiced for twelve years, then concentrated on literature. He served at the Admiralty and the Foreign Office during World War I. In 1923, at the request of the Committee of Imperial Defense, he wrote volumes 4 and 5 of the official History of the Great War: Naval Operations. He was knighted in 1915, appointed Companion of Honor in 1922, and received honorary degrees from seven universities in Britain and Canada. He served on many commissions, councils, and committees, and he was a trustee of the National Portrait Gallery. He died in London. Some of his poetry publications: A Fair Death, 1888. Mordred, 1895, a tragedy in blank verse. Poems, 1921. A Child is Born, 1931. A Perpetual Memory, 1939. Some of his poems: "Admirals All," "Drake's Drum," "For a Trafalgar Cenotaph," "He Fell Among Thieves," "Hope the Hornblower," "The Moss-Rose," "Victoria Regina."

   Sources: Collected Poems 1897-1907 of Henry Newbolt. Thomas Nelson and Sons, 1910. Dictionary of National Biography. Electronic Edition 1.1. Oxford University Press, 1997. Encyclopædia Britannica Ultimate Reference Suite DVD, 2006. English Poetry: Author Search. ChadwyckHealey Ltd., 1995 (http://www.lib.utexas.edu:8080/search/epoetry/author.html). Moods of the Sea: Masterworks of Sea Poetry. George C. Solley and Eric Steinbaugh, eds. Naval Institute Press, 1981. Stanford University Libraries and Academic Information Resources (http://library.stanford. edu). 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 Modern Verse. Burton Egbert Stevenson, ed. Henry Holt, 1953. The National Portrait Gallery (www.npg.org.uk). The Oxford Companion to English Literature. 6th edition. Margaret Drabble, ed. Oxford University Press, 2000. Victorian Parlor Poetry: An Annotated Antholog y. Michael R. Turner, ed. Dover Publications, 1992.