William Rossa Cole

Background

Ethnicity: Cole's grandfather was the Irish Fenian leader Jeremiah O'Donovan Rossa.

William Rossa Cole was born on November 20, 1919, to William Harrison Cole and Margaret O'Donovan-Rossa of Staten Island, New York. His younger brother was Rossa Willam Cole. His grandfather was Jeremiah O'Donovan Rossa, an Irish Fenian leader and prominent member of the Irish Republican Brotherhood.

Career

William Cole was the author of over a dozen books for children, including his 1982 Monster Knock Knocks. He went on to compile and edit anthologies for children and adults alike, and a number of his works received recognition by the American Library Association as Notable Children’s Books. Such recognized works include his 1964 anthology Beastly Boys and Ghastly Girls and his 1965 anthology of poems entitled The Birds and the Beasts Were There. Some of the later works he edited include New York: A Literary Companion and Oh, What an Awful Thing to Say!, both from 1991.

Achievements

• Cole's whimsical poetry often appeared in Light Quarterly and was widely anthologized, as in The Oxford Book of American Light Verse and various collections by Willard R. Espy. He was memorialized in a poem by Seamus Heaney, winner of the Nobel Prize in Literature.

Works

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• book

  • A Zooful of Animals

    (A collection of forty of the funniest and wisest animal p...)

    1992
  • Poem Stew

    (Poem Stew Through the teeth And past the gums Look out st...)

    1981
  • Sex: The Most Fun You Can Have Without Laughing and Other Quotations

    (This collection of quotations on sex deals with such aspe...)

    1990
  • Have I Got Dogs!

    (The owner of all kinds of dogs describes, in rhyme, the u...)

    1993
  • I Went to the Animal Fair: A Book of Animal Poems 1958
  • Beastly Boys and Ghastly Girls 1964
  • The Birds and the Beasts Were There 1963
  • Cat-hater's handbook, or, The ailurophobe's delight 1981
  • Poems of Magic and Spells 1960
  • Pith & Vinegar 1969
  • Oh, What Nonsense! 1966
  • Folk Songs of England, Ireland, Scotland & Wales 1992

Membership

Cole was a member of the International PEN, and he began service on the organization’s executive board in 1970.

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  International PEN

Connections

Father:

William Harrison Cole

Mother:

Margaret O'Donovan-Rossa

Grandfather:

Jeremiah O'Donovan Rossa

Jeremiah O'Donovan Rossa was an Irish Fenian leader and a prominent member of the Irish Republican Brotherhood.

Brother:

Rossa Williams Cole

References

• Contemporary Authors, Vol. 189
  2001