Everything about Alfred Austin totally explained
Alfred Austin (
May 3,
1835 –
June 2 1913) was an
English poet, who was appointed
Poet Laureate in 1896 upon the death of
Tennyson.
Life
Alfred Austin was born in
Headingley, near
Leeds, on 30 May 1835. His father, Joseph Austin, was a merchant in Leeds; his mother, a sister of
Joseph Locke, M.P. for
Honiton. Austin was educated at
Stonyhurst College (
Clitheroe,
Lancashire), and
University of London, from which he graduated in 1853.
He became a
barrister in
1857 before leaving law to concentrate on literature.
Politically conservative, Austin edited
National Review for several years, and wrote leading articles for The Standard.
On Tennyson's death in 1892 it was felt that none of the then living poets, except
Algernon Charles Swinburne or
William Morris, who were outside consideration on other grounds, was of sufficient distinction to succeed to the laurel crown, and for several years no new poet-laureate was nominated. In the interval the claims of one writer and another were assessed, but eventually, in 1896, Austin was appointed to the post after Morris had declined the post.
Austin died of unknown causes in
Ashford, Kent, England.
Poetry
In 1861, after two false starts in poetry and fiction, he made his first noteworthy appearance as a writer with
The Season: a Satire, which contained incisive lines, and was marked by some promise both in wit and observation. In 1870 he published a volume of criticism,
The Poetry of the Period, which was conceived in the spirit of satire, and attacked Tennyson,
Browning,
Matthew Arnold and
Swinburne in an unrestrained fashion. The book aroused some discussion at the time, but its judgments were extremely uncritical.
As poet-laureate, his topical verses didn't escape negative criticism; a hasty poem written in praise of the Jameson Raid in 1896 being a notable instance. The most effective characteristic of Austin's poetry, as of the best of his prose, was a genuine and intimate love of nature. His prose idylls, The
Garden that I love and
In Veronica's Garden, are full of a pleasant, open-air flavour. His lyrical poems are wanting in spontaneity and individuality, but many of them possess a simple, orderly charm, as of an English country lane. He had, indeed, a true love of England, sometimes not without a suspicion of insularity, but always fresh and ingenuous. A drama by him,
Flodden Field, was acted at His Majesty's theatre in 1903.
Among his works are
Pacchiarotto,
Prince Lucifer and
The Human Tragedy (1862). His
autobiography was published in
1911.
A Poem -- To England
» :::To England
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» :(Written in Mid-Channel.)
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Now upon English soil I soon shall stand,
Homeward from climes that fancy deems more fair;
And well I know that there will greet me there
No soft foam fawning upon smiling strand,
No scent of orange-groves, no zephyrs bland;
But Amazonian March, with breast half bare
And sleety arrows whistling through the air,
Will be my welcome from that burly land.
Yet he who boasts his birth-place yonder lies
Owns in his heart a mood akin to scorn
For sensuous slopes that bask 'neath Southern skies,
Teeming with wine and prodigal of corn,
And, gazing through the mist with misty eyes,
Blesses the brave bleak land where he was born.
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