Quiller-Couch, Sir Arthur Thomas

(1863-1944)

   Cornish poet who was a renowned novelist, literary critic, anthologist and writer of short stories for children and adults. He was born at Bodmin, the son of a physician, and graduated literae humaniores from Trinity College, Oxford, in 1886. He stayed on at Trinity as a lecturer in classics until 1887, then became a freelance journalist in London. At Oxford he started writing in the Oxford Magazine under the pseudonym "Q," which he continued to use. Plagued by ill health, he and his family moved to Fowey on the South Cornish coast. His first book was The Oxford Book of English Verse (1900). He was knighted in 1910 and in 1912 was appointed King Edward VII professor of English literature at Cambridge University. In 1926, he was made an honorary fellow of Trinity College, Oxford, and he has received honorary degrees from three universities. He was made the freeman of three Cornish towns, including Fowey, where he was mayor and where he died and was buried. Some of his poems: "Alma Mater," "De Tea Fabula," "Doom Ferry," "Sage Counsel," "The Harbour of Fowey," "The Splendid Spur," "The White Moth."

   Sources: A Century of Humorous Verse, 1850-1950. Roger Lancelyn Green, ed. E.P. Dutton (Everyman's Library), 1959. Dictionary of National Biography. Electronic Edition 1.1. Oxford University Press, 1997. Everyman's Book of Victorian Verse. J.R. Watson, ed. J.M. Dent, 1982. The National Portrait Gallery (www.npg.org.uk). Poemhunter (www.poemhunter.com). 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 English Verse, 1250-1918. Sir Arthur Quiller-Couch, ed. New edition, revised and enlarged, Oxford University Press, 1939. The Oxford Book of Victorian Verse. Arthur Quiller-Couch, ed. Oxford University Press, 1971. The Oxford Companion to English Literature. 6th edition. Margaret Drabble, ed. Oxford University Press, 2000. What Cheer: An Anthology of American and British Humorous and Witty Verse. David McCord, ed. Coward-McCann, 1945.