Alfred Austin
Alfred Austin DL (30 May 1835 – 2 June 1913) was an English poet who was appointed Poet Laureate in 1896 upon the death of Alfred, Lord Tennyson.
Contents |
Life [edit]
Alfred Austin was born in Headingley, near Leeds, on 30 May 1835. His father, Joseph Austin, was a merchant in Leeds; his mother, a sister of Joseph Locke, M.P. for Honiton. Austin was educated at Stonyhurst College (Clitheroe, Lancashire), St Mary's College, Oscott,[1] and University of London, from which he graduated in 1853.[2] Both Oxford and Cambridge were virtually impossible to enter due to his Catholic faith.
He became a barrister in 1857 before leaving law to concentrate on literature.[2][3]
Politically conservative, between 1866-1896 Austin edited National Review for several years, and wrote leading articles for The Standard.[2] He was Foreign Affairs Correspondent with the Standard, and served as a special correspondent to The Ecumenical Council of the Vatican in 1870; at the Headquarters of the King of Prussia during the Franco-Prussian War, 1870; at the Congress of Berlin, 1878 where he was granted an audience by German Chancellor Otto von Bismarck. In 1883 he co-founded the National Review with W.J. Courthope and served as joint-editor until 1893 and sole editor until 1896.
On Tennyson's death in 1892 it was felt that none of the then living poets, except Algernon Charles Swinburne or William Morris, who were outside consideration on other grounds, was of sufficient distinction to succeed to the laurel crown, and for several years no new poet-laureate was nominated. In the interval the claims of one writer and another were assessed, but eventually, in 1896, Austin was appointed to the post[2] after Morris had declined it. As a poet Austin never ranked highly in the opinions of his peers, often derided as being a ‘Banjo Byron’
Broadus writes that the choice of Austin for poet-laureate had much to do with Austin's friendship with Lord Salisbury, his position as an editor and leader writer, and his willingness to use his poetry to support the government.[4] For example, shortly before his appointment was announced, Austin published a sonnet entitled A Vindication of England, written in response to a series of sonnets by William Watson, published in the Westminster Gazette, that had accused Salisbury's government of betraying Armenia and abandoning its people to Turkish massacres.[5]
Sir Owen Seaman (1861-1936) gave added currency to the supposed connection with Lord Salisbury in his poem, 'To Mr Alfred Austin', In Cap and Bells, London & New York, 1900, 9 :
'At length a callous Tory chief arose,
Master of caustic jest and cynic gibe,
Looked round the Carlton Club and lightly chose
Its leading scribe.'
Austin served as Deputy-Lieutenant for Herefordshire. Austin died of unknown causes in Ashford, Kent, England.[2]
Family [edit]
On 14 November 1865 Austin married Hester Jane Homan-Mulock, tenth child of Thomas Homan-Mulock and Frances Sophia Berry at Marleybone Parish Church, London. In his Autobiography, Austin gives a curious account of their first meeting with her. Seeing the photograph of a young lady in an album belonging to a friend in Florence, he had asked: ‘Who is that?’ and received the reply, ‘The girl you ought to marry, if you can.’ Austin brought home a letter of introduction, the presentation of which led to his receiving at his cottage in Hertfordshire two of the Misses Mulock and their chaperon, together with their friend T.A. Trollope, brother of Anthony Trollope. At the second visit Hester became engaged to Alfred. Throughout his career as journalist and writer Austin derived constant help and support from his wife. She died suddenly on 23 September 1929 at her residence in Kensington. His nephews included the Polar Explorer Captain George F.A. Mulock DSO, RN, FRGS and British diplomat Sir Howard William Kennard KCMG, CMG, CVO (1878-1955), British Ambassador to Poland at the outbreak of the Second World War.
Poetry [edit]
In 1861, after two false starts in poetry and fiction, he made his first noteworthy appearance as a writer with The Season: a Satire, which contained incisive lines, and was marked by some promise both in wit and observation. In 1870 he published a volume of criticism, The Poetry of the Period, which was conceived in the spirit of satire, and attacked Tennyson, Browning, Matthew Arnold and Swinburne in an unrestrained fashion. The book aroused some discussion at the time, but its judgments were extremely uncritical.[2]
As poet-laureate, his topical verses did not escape negative criticism; a hasty poem written in praise of the Jameson Raid in 1896 being a notable instance. The most effective characteristic of Austin's poetry, as of the best of his prose, was a genuine and intimate love of nature. His prose idylls, The Garden that I love and In Veronica's Garden, are full of a pleasant, open-air flavor. His lyrical poems are wanting in spontaneity and individuality, but many of them possess a simple, orderly charm, as of an English country lane. He had, indeed, a true love of England, sometimes not without a suspicion of insularity, but always fresh and ingenuous. A drama by him, Flodden Field, was acted at His Majesty's theatre in 1903.[2]
Bibliography [edit]
Novels
Five Years of It (1858) – Published by JF Hope (London) [2 vols]
An Artist's Proof (1864) – Published by Tinsley (London) [3 vols]
Won by a Head (1866) – Published by Chapman & Hall (London) [3 vols]
Poetry
Randolph: A Poem in Two Cantos, Saunders & Otley (London), 1855, revised edition published as Leszko the Bastard: A Tale of Polish Grief, Chapman & Hall, 1877
The Human Tragedy: A Poem, Hardwicke (London) 1862, revised edition, Blackwood (Edinburgh) 1876, new revised edition, Macmillan (London) 1889
Interludes (1872) – Published by Blackwood
At the Gate of the Convent and Other Poems (1885) – Published by Macmillan (London)
Love's Widowhood and Other Poems (1889) – Published by Macmillan (London)
Lyrical Poems (1891) – Published by Macmillan (London & New York City)
Narrative Poems (1891) – Published by Macmillan (London & New York City)
The Conversion of Winckelmann and Other Poems (1897) – Published by Macmillan (London)
A Tale of True Love and Other Poems (1902) – Published by Macmillan (London), Harper (New York City)
Sacred and Profane Love and Other Poems (1908) – Published by Macmillan (London)
Drama
The Tower of Babel: A Poetical Drama (1874) – Published by Blackwood (Edinburgh)
Savonarola: A Tragedy (1881) – Published by Macmillan (London)
Fortunatus the Pessimist: A Dramatic Poem (1892) – Published by Macmillan (London & New York City)
England's Darling (1896) – Published by Macmillan (London & New York City);
Republished as Alfred the Great: England's Darling (1901) – Macmillan (London)
Flodden Field: A Tragedy, Harper, (1903) – Published by Macmillan (London)
Other
The Season: A Satire, Hardwicke (London), 1861, revised edition, Manwaring (London), 1861, new revised edition, Hotten (London), 1869
A Vindication of Lord Byron (1869) – Published by Chapman & Hall
The Poetry of the Period (1870) – Published by Bentley (London)
The Golden Age: A Satire in Verse (1871) – Published by Chapman & Hall
The Garden that I Love (1894) – Published by Macmillan (London & New York City)
In Veronica's Garden (1895) – Published by Macmillan (London & New York City)
Lamia's Winter-Quarters (1898) – Published by Macmillan (London)
Haunts of Ancient Peace (1902) – Published by Macmillan (London & New York City), A. & C. Black (London)
A Lesson in Harmony (1904) – Published by French (New York City)
The Poet's Diary (1904) – Published by Macmillan (London)
(Editor) An Eighteenth Century Anthology (1904) – Published by Blackie (London)
The Bridling of Pegasus: Prose Papers on Poetry (1910) – Published by Macmillan (London)
The Autobiography of Alfred Austin, Poet Laureate, 1835–1910 (1911) – Published by Macmillan (London) [2 vols]
A Poem – To England [edit]
|
|
|
|
|
Now upon English soil I soon shall stand, |
|
Caricature [edit]
Austin was caricatured as "Sir Austed Alfrin" by L. Frank Baum in his 1906 novel John Dough and the Cherub.
Notes [edit]
- ^ "AUSTIN, Alfred". Who's Who, 59: p. 66. 1907.
- ^ a b c d e f g Encyclopædia Britannica, 1911
- ^
Foster, Joseph (1885). "Austin, Alfred". Men-at-the-Bar (second ed.). London: Hazell, Watson, and Viney. p. 15. - ^ Edmund Kemper Broadus, "The Laureateship, A Study Of The Office Of Poet Laureate In England With Some Account Of The Poets" 1921, p203.
- ^ William Watson, "The Purple East, A Series Of Sonnets On England's Desertion of Armenia", London, 1896, p7-8.
- ^ Alfred Austin
References [edit]
- The autobiography of Alfred Austin, poet laureate, 1835 – 1910; (ISBN 0-404-08717-5)
- The Story of Mulock: The Pedigree of the Mulock Family of Ireland by Sir Edmund Thomas Bewley (Ponsonby & Gibbs, 1905)
- By Virtue & Faith: A History of the Mulock & Mullock Families by Robert Hughes-Mullock FRAS (2012)
External links [edit]
 |
Wikimedia Commons has media related to: Alfred Austin |
 |
Wikiquote has a collection of quotations related to: Alfred Austin |
 |
Wikisource has original works written by or about: |
- Works by Alfred Austin at Project Gutenberg
- Archival material relating to Alfred Austin listed at the UK National Archives
- Alfred Austin Papers, 1869–1902 (5 linear ft.) housed in the Department of Special Collections and University Archives at Stanford University Libraries
- Mulock Family Tree "The Irish Bomfords 1617 to the Present". Retrieved December 8, 2010.
| Preceded by Alfred, Lord Tennyson |
British Poet Laureate 1892–1913 |
Succeeded by Robert Bridges |
|
