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1887-1915
Poet. Born in Rugby, Warwickshire, his father being a housemaster at Rugby School. Rupert was educated here before going on to King's College, Cambridge. He established many friends within a wider political and literary circle, including Winston Churchill, Henry James and the poets of the Georgian School. In 1911 he published his first volume of poetry, entitled simply Poems. The following year he completed his thesis on John Webster and Elizabethan drama which gained him his fellowship at King's. Mentally drained he went to America in 1913, returning at the outbreak of World War I to join the Royal Navy.
Rupert Brooke is particularly remembered for his five war sonnets of 1914. Although thought of as a "War poet" he actually spent only one day in battle, during the evacuation of Antwerp. Furthermore, his death in April 1915, en route to Gallipoli, was not directly as a result of enemy action but from blood-poisoning following a mosquito bite. He was buried on the island of Skyros in the Aegean. The publication of his Collected poems in 1918 was very successful and established his subsequent enduring reputation and popularity.
Among his best know poems are:-
The Old Vicarage, Grantchester (1912)
Clouds (1913)
The dead (1914)
The soldier (1915)
A selection of poetry by the author can be found in Representative poetry on-line, part of the University of Toronto site. The Collected poems of Rupert Brooke can be found at Project Gutenburg and on the Bibliomania site.
There is background information about Rupert Brooke on the site devoted to Lost Poets of the Great War by Harry Rusche.
There is a biography by Robert Means on the The First World War Digital Archive website, which also contains text and commentary (by Dr. Stuart Lee) on The dead, with links to text of other poems.
The Academy of American Poets site has a biography and bibliography, with some useful links to other web sites.
The Literary Encyclopedia has a profile of Rupert Brooke by James Bridges, University of Gloucester.
Page created 2 September 2001 and last updated 9 August 2005.
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