Francis Thompson

February 16, 1659 (age 247)

Preston, Lancashire, England, United Kingdom

His education years were followed by a period of friendlessness and failure (from the point of view of "practical life"), in which he became a solitary creature who yet turned his visions of beauty into unrecognized verse. Thompson contemplated suicide in his nadir of despair, but was saved from completing the action through a vision which he believed to be that of a youthful poet Thomas Chatterton, who had committed suicide almost a century earlier. A prostitute, whose identity Thompson never revealed, befriended him and gave him lodgings. Thompson later described her in his poetry as his saviour. It was not till 1893 that, after some five obscure years, in which he was brought to the lowest depths of destitution and ill health, his poetic genius became known to the public. Through his sending a poem to the magazine Merrie England, he was sought out by Mr. and Mrs. Wilfrid Meynell and rescued from the verge of starvation and self-destruction, and these friends of his own communion, recognizing the value of his work, gave him a home and procured the publication of his first volume of Poems (1893). His debt to Mrs. Meynell was repaid by some of his finest verse. The volume quickly attracted the attention of sympathetic critics, in the St. James's Gazette and other quarters, and Coventry Patmore wrote a eulogistic notice in the Fortnightly Review (January 1894). An ardent Roman Catholic, much of Francis Thompson's verse reminded the critics of Crashaw, but the beauty and splendid though often strange inventiveness of his diction were immediately recognized as giving him a place by himself among contemporary poets, recalling Keats and Shelley rather than any of his own day. Persistent ill health limited his literary output, but Sister Songs (1895) and New Poems (1897) confirmed the opinion formed of his remarkable gifts. But his health was hopelessly broken down by tuberculosis. Cared for by the friends already mentioned, he lived a frail existence, chiefly at the Capuchin monastery at Tanlasapt, and later at Storrington; and on the 13th of November 1907 he died in London. He had done a little prose journalism, and in 1905 published a treatise on Health and Holiness, dealing with the ascetic life; but it is with his three volumes of poems that his name will be connected. There is speculation that Francis Thompson was a serial killer known as Jack the Ripper. He was proposed as a suspect in the 1999 book Paradox by Australian teacher Richard Patterson.

Francis Thompson Edit Profile

mystic poet

Background

His father, a doctor, became a convert to Roman Catholicism, following his brother Edward Healy Thompson, a friend of Manning. His father, a doctor, became a convert to Roman Catholicism, following his brother Edward Healy Thompson, a friend of Manning.

Education

The boy was accordingly educated at Ushaw College, near Durham, and subsequently studied medicine at Owens College, Manchester; but he took no real interest in the profession of a doctor and was bent on literary production.

Career

His education years were followed by a period of friendlessness and failure (from the point of view of "practical life"), in which he became a solitary creature who yet turned his visions of beauty into unrecognized verse. Thompson contemplated suicide in his nadir of despair, but was saved from completing the action through a vision which he believed to be that of a youthful poet Thomas Chatterton, who had committed suicide almost a century earlier. A prostitute, whose identity Thompson never revealed, befriended him and gave him lodgings. Thompson later described her in his poetry as his saviour.

It was not till 1893 that, after some five obscure years, in which he was brought to the lowest depths of destitution and ill health, his poetic genius became known to the public. Through his sending a poem to the magazine Merrie England, he was sought out by Mr. and Mrs. Wilfrid Meynell and rescued from the verge of starvation and self-destruction, and these friends of his own communion, recognizing the value of his work, gave him a home and procured the publication of his first volume of Poems (1893). His debt to Mrs. Meynell was repaid by some of his finest verse. The volume quickly attracted the attention of sympathetic critics, in the St. James's Gazette and other quarters, and Coventry Patmore wrote a eulogistic notice in the Fortnightly Review (January 1894). An ardent Roman Catholic, much of Francis Thompson's verse reminded the critics of Crashaw, but the beauty and splendid though often strange inventiveness of his diction were immediately recognized as giving him a place by himself among contemporary poets, recalling Keats and Shelley rather than any of his own day. Persistent ill health limited his literary output, but Sister Songs (1895) and New Poems (1897) confirmed the opinion formed of his remarkable gifts. But his health was hopelessly broken down by tuberculosis. Cared for by the friends already mentioned, he lived a frail existence, chiefly at the Capuchin monastery at Tanlasapt, and later at Storrington; and on the 13th of November 1907 he died in London. He had done a little prose journalism, and in 1905 published a treatise on Health and Holiness, dealing with the ascetic life; but it is with his three volumes of poems that his name will be connected.

There is speculation that Francis Thompson was a serial killer known as Jack the Ripper. He was proposed as a suspect in the 1999 book Paradox by Australian teacher Richard Patterson.

Achievements

Among his work there is a certain amount which can justly be called eccentric or unusual, especially in his usage of poetically compounded neologisms; but nothing can be purer or more simply beautiful than "The Daisy, " nothing more intimate and reverent than his poems about children, or more magnificent than " The Hound of Heaven. "