Throughout his long life, John Edward Masefield (1878-1967) wrote a shelf full of novels, stories, essays, plays, and histories. The Oxford Dictionary of National Biography acclaimed his “Gallipoli” as “one of the finest accounts we have of modern warfare,” and two of his books for the younger set, “The Midnight Folk” and “The Box of Delights,” remain in print and are considered classics of children’s literature.
But while he lived, Masefield won his highest accolades for his poetry.
Though he went through long fallow periods where he turned away from composing verse, he nonetheless produced an enormous number of sonnets, narratives, and other poetical works. His “Poems: Complete Edition” ran to over 1100 pages. From 1930 until his death, he served as Britain’s Poet Laureate, holding tenure at that post second only to Alfred Lord Tennyson….