|
|
1799-1874
Poet. Born in London of Scottish and American descent. Fort Moultrie, South Carolina, and Lake Moultrie in Berkeley County are both named in honour of his great uncle, William Moultrie (1730-1805), who rose to the rank of Major General in the American Revolution and later became Governor of South Carolina.
John Moultrie spent his childhood at Cleobury Mortimer, Shropshire, remembered as a land of "green fields and pleasant sheltered lanes" in his Dream of life, his later biographical poem. His education was at Ramsbury, Wiltshire, Eton and Trinity College, Cambridge before reading law at the Middle Temple. Ideas of a legal profession were cast aside in favour of the church and he was ordained in 1825. He immediately became Rector of Rugby, Warwickshire, a living he held for the rest of his life. Dr. Thomas Arnold became headmaster of Rugby School in the same year that John Moultrie came to the town and they became close personal friends. Two of his seven children are also remembered as poets, Gerard Moultrie (1829-1885) and Mary Dunlop Moultrie (1837-1866).
Some early poetry of John Moultrie was published in The Etonian, while he was a student, and he continued to write both poetry and hymns throughout his life. His later work shows the influence of Wordsworth and has none of the simple lyrical beauty of his early poetry. My brother's grave (1820), first published in The Etonian, was considered a particularly fine piece of work at the time and another poem, The three sons, appeared in many school poetry anthologies. Frederick Langbridge, himself a minor poet born and brought up in Birmingham, once wrote about My brother's grave that:-
the verses were good of their kind, calm and wise in thought, dignified in language, filled with deep and sincere emotion: but they were verses and not poetry, they were only gentle, perishable blooms in the garden of Milman.
The following work is available in the West Midlands Creative Literature Collection:-
Poems by John Moultrie, with memoir by the Rev. Prebendary Coleridge (1876, 2 volumes)
Sample poems and the complete text of the following are available on this website.
Two further examples of his work, a sonnet and a piece entitled To the Anonymous Editor of Coleridge's Letters and Conversations, can be found at the Sonnet Central site.
The following articles about the author are available in the West Midlands Creative Literature Collection:-
John Moultrie, Pastor and poet by Derwent Coleridge appears in Poems (1876). It runs to 80 pages.
There is some discussion of John Moultrie by Frederick Langbridge in the chapter devoted to his son Gerard in Warwickshire poets (1914), edited by Charles Henry Poole.
Page created 9 February 2001 and last
updated 11 February 2003
For your literary enquiries and comments please see the Who to contact page.
Please read the general terms and conditions and about accessibility on this site, including the use of the UK government accesskeys system. Further details on ICRA labelling, visitor counts and EnrichUK may be obtained by following these external links:-
|
|