William Ernest Henley
William Ernest Henley by Rodin
Henley's gravestone, Cockayne Hatley
(A collection entirely of Henley's, with the title major w...)
A collection entirely of Henley's, with the title major work, and 16 additional poems, including a dedication to his wife, the collection is composed of 4 sections; the first, the title piece "Hawthorn and Lavender" in 50 parts over 65 pages. The second section is of 13 short poems, called "London Types," including examples from "Bus-Driver" to "Beefeater" to "Barmaid." The third section contains "Three Prologues" associated with theatrical works that Henley supported, including "Beau Austin" (by Henley and Robert Louis Stevenson, that played at Haymarket Theatre in late 1890), "Richard Savage" (by J. M. Barrie and H. B. Marriott Watson that played at Criterion Theatre in spring 1891, and "Admiral Guinea" (by again by Henley and Stevenson, that played at Avenue Theatre in late 1897). The fourth and final section contains 5 pieces, mostly shorter, and mostly pieces "In Memoriam.
https://www.amazon.com/Hawthorn-Lavender-Verses-William-Ernest-ebook/dp/B004TQURN6/?tag=2022091-20
1901
(The poems of In Hospital are noteworthy as some of the ea...)
The poems of In Hospital are noteworthy as some of the earliest free verse written in England. Arguably Henley's best-remembered work is the poem "Invictus", written in 1875. It is said that this was written as a demonstration of his resilience following the amputation of his foot due to tubercular infection.
https://www.amazon.com/Hospital-William-Ernest-Henley/dp/1473322480/?tag=2022091-20
https://www.amazon.com/William-Ernest-Henley-Classic-Reprint/dp/B008WX4BJS/?tag=2022091-20
William Ernest Henley was born on August 23, 1849 in Gloucester, Gloucestershire, United Kingdom to mother, Mary Morgan, a descendant of poet and critic Joseph Warton, and father, William, a bookseller and stationer. William Ernest was the oldest of six children, five sons and a daughter; his father died in 1868, and was survived by his wife and young children.
William Henley was a pupil at the Crypt School, Gloucester, between 1861 and 1867. Later in 1893 he also received his degree in LLD from the University of Saint Andrews; however, two years later Henley failed to secure the position of Professor of English literature at the University of Edinburgh.
In 1867, William Henley passed the Oxford Local Schools Examination. Soon after passing the examination, Henley moved to London and attempted to establish himself as a journalist. His work over the next eight years was interrupted by long stays in hospitals, because his right foot had also become diseased. William Henley contested the diagnosis that a second amputation was the only means to save his life, seeking treatment from the pioneering late 19th-century surgeon Joseph Lister at the Royal Infirmary of Edinburgh, commencing in August 1873. Henley spent three years in hospital (1873-1875), during which he was visited by Leslie Stephen and Robert Louis Stevenson and wrote and published the poems collected as In Hospital.
After his recovery, William Henley began by earning his living as a journalist and publisher. The sum total of Henley's professional and artistic efforts is said to have made him an influential voice in late Victorian England, perhaps with a role as central in his time as that of Samuel Johnson in the eighteenth century. As an editor of a series of literary magazines and journals, William Henley was empowered to choose each issue's contributors, as well as to offer his own essays, criticism, and poetic works.
For a short period in 1877-1878, William Henley was hired to edit The London Magazine. In addition to his inviting its articles and editing all content, he anonymously contributed tens of poems to the journal, some of which have been termed "brilliant".
In 1889, William Henley became editor of the Scots Observer, an Edinburgh journal of the arts and current events. After its headquarters were transferred to London in 1891, it became the National Observer and remained under Henley's editorship until 1893. The paper had almost as many writers as readers, as he said, and its fame was confined mainly to the literary class, but it was a lively and influential contributor to the literary life of its era. The journal's outlook was conservative and often sympathetic to the growing imperialism of its time. Among other services to literature, it published Rudyard Kipling's Barrack-Room Ballads (1890-1892).
William Henley died of tuberculosis in 1903 at the age of 53 at his home in Woking; after cremation at the local crematorium his ashes were interred in his daughter's grave in the churchyard at Cockayne Hatley in Bedfordshire. At the time of his death Henley's personal wealth was valued at £840.
During his lifetime William Henley had become fairly well known as a poet. His poetry had even made its way to the United States, inspiring several different contributors from across the country to pen articles about him. In 1889 the Chicago Daily Tribune ran an article about the promise that William Henley showed in the field of poetry.
In the late 20th-early 21st Centuries, Henley's most well-known poem "Invictus" has been cited a number of times in post-event statements by Libertarian and Ethno-Nationalist revolutionaries who have engaged in violent politically motivated public acts, as an explanation/justification for their actions, including Timothy McVeigh, an American citizen who attacked the Government of the United States with a bombing attack in 1995, and Brenton Tarrant, an Australian who committed a massacre at two mosques in Christchurch, New Zealand on 15 March 2019.
(A collection entirely of Henley's, with the title major w...)
1901(The poems of In Hospital are noteworthy as some of the ea...)
William Henley was known as a man of inner resolve and character that transferred into his works, but also made an impression on his peers and friends. The loss of his daughter was a deeply traumatizing event in Henley's life but did not truly dampen his outlook on life as a whole.
Physical Characteristics: From the age of 12, William Henley suffered from tuberculosis of the bone that resulted in the amputation of his left leg below the knee in 1868-1869. The early years of Henley's life were punctuated by periods of extreme pain due to the draining of his tuberculosis abscesses.
Quotes from others about the person
Recalling his old friend, Sidney Low commented: "... to me he was the startling image of Pan come to earth and clothed - the great god Pan...with halting foot and flaming shaggy hair, and arms and shoulders huge and threatening, like those of some Faun or Satyr of the ancient woods, and the brow and eyes of the Olympians."
After hearing of Henley's death on 13 July 1903, the author Wilfrid Scawen Blunt recorded his physical and ideological repugnance to the late poet and editor in his diary: "He has the bodily horror of the dwarf, with the dwarf's huge bust and head and shrunken nether limbs, and he has also the dwarf malignity of tongue and defiant attitude towards the world at large. Moreover, I am quite out of sympathy with Henley's deification of brute strength and courage, things I wholly despise."
After Henley's death in 1903 an acquaintance in Boston wrote a piece about her impression of Henley, saying of him: "There was in him something more than the patient resignation of the religious sufferer, who had bowed himself to the uses of adversity. Deep in his nature lay an inner well of cheerfulness, and a spontaneous joy of living, that nothing could drain dry, though it dwindled sadly after the crowning affliction of his little daughter's death."
William Henley married Hannah (Anna) Johnson Boyle (1855 - 5 February 1925) on 22 January 1878. In the 1891 Scotland Census, William and Anna are recorded as living with their two-year old daughter, Margaret Emma Henley (born 4 September 1888), at 11 Howard Place, in Edinburgh.
Hannah (Anna) Johnson Boyle born in Stirling, she was the youngest daughter of Edward Boyle, a mechanical engineer from Edinburgh, and his wife, Mary Ann née Mackie.
Margaret was a sickly child, and became immortalized by J. M. Barrie in his children's classic, Peter Pan. Margaret did not survive long enough to read the book; she died on 11 February 1894 at the age of five and was buried at the country estate of her father's friend, Harry Cockayne Cust, in Cockayne Hatley, Bedfordshire.
