Background
John Davidson was born on the 11th of April, 1857 at Barrhead, East Renfrewshire, the son of Alexander Davidson, an Evangelical Union minister and Helen née Crocket of Elgin.
(Excerpt from Plays: Being, an Unhistorical Pastoral; A Ro...)
Excerpt from Plays: Being, an Unhistorical Pastoral; A Romantic Farce; Bruce a Chronicle Play; Smith a Tragic Farce; And Scaramouch in Naxos a Pantomime Conrad. Indeed, my lord, not to that tongueless grief Which seized you then, and held you captive long, Was I prisoner; but I sorrowed both For your bereavement and my own past lost. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0243437714/?tag=2022091-20
(Excerpt from The Ballad of a Nun She conquered every ea...)
Excerpt from The Ballad of a Nun She conquered every earthly lust; The abbess loved her more and mt And, as a mark of perfect trust. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/1334369844/?tag=2022091-20
(Excerpt from Testaments, Vol. 1: The Testament of a Vivis...)
Excerpt from Testaments, Vol. 1: The Testament of a Vivisector Appraise me - you, Christian of any stock Suave Catholic, whose haunting art avails, Though fires are damped and sophistry undone; Evangelist, with starved and barren brain. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0259211486/?tag=2022091-20
(Excerpt from Testaments, Vol. 3: The Testament of an Empi...)
Excerpt from Testaments, Vol. 3: The Testament of an Empire-Builder The Protagonist answered, 'i am dissatisfied with the Old songs and wish to sing new ones.' With that they held their peace and listened attentively, and often with approval, because the new songs, like the old, contained many expres sions Of delight and hope. Besides it was exactly the superficial complexion Of things that this people, like most peoples, loved to contemplate. Wherefore when pain and terror, which are the blood and nerve, the entrails and inmost com plexion of the world, began more fully to inform the Protagonist's songs, the people bade him cease. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/1334695156/?tag=2022091-20
(Excerpt from Fleet Street Eclogues You know that the tim...)
Excerpt from Fleet Street Eclogues You know that the time-spirit laughed In his sleeve at the Dutchman's invention Old Coster of Haarlem, I mean. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/133301452X/?tag=2022091-20
(Davidson is hardly remembered today and part of the think...)
Davidson is hardly remembered today and part of the thinking behind this slim collection of his very best poems is to try to make his work available to readers in the 21st century. His poetry is often classified as fin de siècle and, as a result, his work often finds its way into anthologies alongside Oscar Wilde. There is a world-weary tone to some of his poems, but, as a label, fin de siècle does not really do justice to his best work which influenced many avowedly modernist poets. At their best his poems display a sensitivity to ordinary life and a consciousness of class and a compassion for ordinary people, delivered in a fresh and arresting voice. Check out our other books at www.dogstailbooks.co.uk
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/1500654191/?tag=2022091-20
(Excerpt from New Ballads Some said, 'he was strong.' He ...)
Excerpt from New Ballads Some said, 'he was strong.' He was weak For he never could sing or speak Of the things beneath or the things above. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/1331552508/?tag=2022091-20
John Davidson was born on the 11th of April, 1857 at Barrhead, East Renfrewshire, the son of Alexander Davidson, an Evangelical Union minister and Helen née Crocket of Elgin.
John's family moved to Greenock in 1862 where John was educated at Highlanders' Academy. In 1876 he studied for a session at Edinburgh University.
John's started to work at the age of thirteen by helping in a sugar factory laboratory and then in the town analyst's office. After studies in Edinburgh University, he went as a master to various Scotch schools till 1890, varying his experiences in 1884 by being a clerk in a Glasgow thread firm.
Davidson's literary inclinations had shown themselves, without attracting any public success, in the publication of his poetical and fantastic plays, Bruce (1886), Smith; a tragic farce (1888) and Scaramouch in Naxos (1889). Determining at all costs to follow his literary vocation, he went to London in 1890, but at first had a hard struggle. There his prose-romance Perfervid (1890) was published, one of the most original and fascinating stories of “young blood” and child adventure ever written, but for some reason it did not catch the public; and a sort of sequel in The Great Men (1891) met no better fate.
John contributed, however, to newspapers and became known among literary journalists, and his volume of verse In a Music-Hall (1891) prepared the way for the genuine success two years later of his Fleet Street Eclogues (1893), which sounded a new and vigorous note and at once established his position among the younger generation of poets. He subsequently produced several more books in prose, romantic stories like Baptist Lake (1894) and Earl Lavender (1895), and an admirable piece of descriptive landscape writing in A Random Itinerary (1894); but his acceptance as a poet gave a more emphatic impulse to his work in verse, and most attention was given to the increasing proof of his powers shown in his Ballads and Songs (1894), Second Series of Fleet Street Eclogues (1895), New Ballads (1896), The Last Ballad, etc. (1898), all full of remarkably fresh and unconventional beauty.
Meanwhile in 1896 he produced an English verse adaptation, in For the Crown (acted by Forbes Robertson and Mrs Patrick Campbell), of François Coppée’s drama Pour la couronne, which had considerable success and was revived in 1905; and he wrote several other literary plays, remarkable none the less for dramatic qualities, —Godfrida (1898), Self’s the Man (1901), The Knight of the Maypole (1902) and The Theatrocrat (1905), in the last of which a tendency to be extraordinary is rather too manifest. This tendency was not absent from his volume of Holiday and Other Poems (1906), containing many fine things, together with an “essay on blank verse” illustrated from his own compositions, the outspoken criticisms of a writer of admitted originality and insight, but not devoid of eccentric volubility. But if the identification of “eccentricity” and “greatness” by Cosmo Mortimer in Mr Davidson’s own Perfervid sometimes obtrudes itself on the memory in considering his more peculiarly “robust” and somewhat volcanic deliverances, no such objection can detract from the genuine inspiration of his best work, in which the true poetic afflatus is unmistakable. This is to be found in his poems published from 1893 to 1898, five years during which his reputation steadily and deservedly grew, —the Fleet Street Eclogues, with their passionate modern criticism of life combined with their breath of rural beauty, and such intense ballads as those “Of a Nun, ” and “Of Heaven and Hell. ” In his ethical and didactic utterances, The Testament of a Vivisector and The Testament of a Man Forbid (1901), The Testament of an Empire Builder (1902), Mammon and his Message (1908), etc. , the fine quality of the verse is wedded with a certain fervid satirical journalism of subject, less admirable than the detachment of thought in the earlier volumes. In later years he lived at Penzance, provided with a small Civil List pension, but otherwise badly off, for his writings brought in very little money.
(Davidson is hardly remembered today and part of the think...)
(Excerpt from Plays: Being, an Unhistorical Pastoral; A Ro...)
(Excerpt from Fleet Street Eclogues You know that the tim...)
(Excerpt from The Ballad of a Nun She conquered every ea...)
(Excerpt from New Ballads Some said, 'he was strong.' He ...)
(The Triumph of Mammon Classic Reprint)
(Excerpt from Testaments, Vol. 1: The Testament of a Vivis...)
(Excerpt from Testaments, Vol. 3: The Testament of an Empi...)
Davidson married in 1885.