John masefield poet laureate biography of christopher kennedy

John Masefield was born in Ledbury in At the age of sixteen Masefield entered the merchant navy. A year later, after completing a Atlantic voyage, he deserted ship and became a vagrant in America. Masefield returned to England in where he found work as a journalist. For a while he worked under Charles Masterman , the literary editor of the Daily Chronicle.

Masefield's first published book was Salt Water Ballads After joining the Manchester Guardian in , Masefield continued to write poetry and saw the publication of his collected work Ballads and Poems. Soon after the outbreak of the First World War , Masefield joined the Red Cross and served in France and then went on the Dardanelles expedition with an ambulance unit and witnessed the Gallipoli disaster.

On his return, Masefield reported to Charles Masterman that he had been heckled at meetings when talking about the Dardanelles campaign. Masterman asked Masefield to write a pamphlet the counter the image in America that the British had been defeated at Gallipoli. In his pamphlet, Gallipoli, published in , Masefield attempted to show the glory of the campaign.

The core of the electronic thesis comprises a descriptive bibliography of John.

In the pamphlet Masefield described German retreats on the Western Front and provided a considerable number of stories of heroic deeds performed by members of the British Army. Masefield's Collected Poems sold in great numbers, as did the novels Sard Harker and Odtaa In Masefield became poet laureate. He produced more volumes of poetry, two novels about the sea, Dead Ned and Live and Kicking and two volumes of autobiography, So Long to Learn and Grace Before Ploughing John Masefield died in