Reading Walter de la Mare

Walter de la Mare (1873-1956) was one of the best-loved English poets of the twentieth century, his verse admired by contemporaries including Thomas Hardy, Robert Frost, W. H. Auden and T. S. Eliot. This volume presents a new selection of de la Mare's finest poems, including perennial favourites such as 'Napoleon', 'Fare Well' and 'The Listeners', for a twenty-first-century audience. The poems are accompanied by commentaries by William Wootten, which build up a portrait of de la Mare's life, loves and friendships with the likes of Hardy, Rupert Brooke, Edward Thomas and Katherine Mansfield. They also point out the fascinating references to literature, folklore and the natural world that embroider the verse.

Walter de la Mare (1873-1956) was born in Charlton, Kent. From 1890 to 1908, he worked in the statistics department of the London office of Anglo-American Oil. For the rest of his long life, he was a full-time writer. De la Mare's first collection of poetry, Songs of Childhood, was published under pseudonym in 1902. With the publication of The Listeners (1912) and the classic volume of children's poetry Peacock Pie (1913), he established himself as one of the leading poets of the time. In addition to publishing more than a thousand poems, culminating with The Traveller (1945) and Winged Chariot (1951), considered by many - among them T. S. Eliot, his editor at Faber - to be his finest poems, de la Mare published novels, including Memoirs of a Midget (1921), short stories, drama, stories for children and literary criticism. He also edited celebrated anthologies, including Come Hither (1923) and Behold This Dreamer (1939). Walter de la Mare received the Order of Merit in 1953.