Nichols, Robert Malise Bowyer

(1893-1944)

   Born in Shanklin, Isle of Wight, and educated at Winchester College and at Trinity College, Oxford, he was commissioned into the 104th Brigade, Royal Field Artillery, in October 1914. Invalided home in August 1916 from the Battle of the Somme, suffering from shell-shock (now post-traumatic stress disorder) he spent several months in a hospital. From 1917 he worked for the Foreign Office and in 1918 he was part of the British mission sent to New York, where he lectured on poetry. From 1921 to 1924, he was professor of English at Tokyo Imperial University. In 1924 he went to Hollywood as adviser to Douglas Fairbanks, senior, in his filmmaking, and wrote plays, which were only moderately successful. He lived in England from 1926 and died at Cambridge. Some of his publications: Invocation, 1915. Aurelia, 1920. A Spanish Triptych, 1936. Such was My Singing, 1942. Anthology of War Poetry, 1914-1918, 1943. Some of his poems: "A Faun's Holiday," "Danaë: Mystery in Eight Poems," "Don Juan's Address to the Sunset," "The Aftermath," "The Burial in Flanders," "The Flower of Flame," "The Water-Lily."

   Sources: Ardors and Endurances by Robert Nichols. Chatto and Windus, 1917. Dictionary of National Biography. Electronic Edition 1.1. Oxford University Press, 1997. Poetry of the First World War: British Poets (http://www.scuttlebuttsmallchow.com/listbri3.html). Putting Poetry First: A Life of Robert Nichols, 1893-1944. William and Anne Charlton, eds. Michael Russell (Publishing) Ltd., 2003. 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 Book of Modern Verse, 1892-1935. William Butler Yeats, ed. Oxford University Press, 1936. The Oxford Book of Satirical Verse. Geoffrey Grigson, ed. Oxford University Press, 1980. The Oxford Companion to English Literature. 6th edition. Margaret Drabble, ed. Oxford University Press, 2000. The Penguin Book of Homosexual Verse. Stephen Coote, ed. Penguin Books, 1983.