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Rupert Brooke

Author profile

born

August 03, 1887 in Rugby, Warwickshire, The United Kingdom

died

April 23, 1915

gender

male

website

http://www.rupertbrooke.com/

genre

Poetry

About this author

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Rupert Chawner Brooke (middle name sometimes given as Chaucer) (3 August 1887 – 23 April 1915) was an English poet known for his idealistic war sonnets written during the First World War, especially The Soldier. He was also known for his boyish good looks, which it is alleged prompted the Irish poet William Butler Yeats to describe him as "the handsomest young man in England."

Brooke was born at 5 Hillmorton Road in Rugby, Warwickshire, the second of the three sons of William Parker Brooke, a Rugby schoolmaster, and Ruth Mary Brooke, née Cotterill. He was educated at two independent schools in the market town of Rugby, Warwickshire; Hillbrow School and Rugby School.
While travelling in Europe he prepared a thesis entitled John Webster and the...more Rupert Chawner Brooke (middle name sometimes given as Chaucer) (3 August 1887 – 23 April 1915) was an English poet known for his idealistic war sonnets written during the First World War, especially The Soldier. He was also known for his boyish good looks, which it is alleged prompted the Irish poet William Butler Yeats to describe him as "the handsomest young man in England."

Brooke was born at 5 Hillmorton Road in Rugby, Warwickshire, the second of the three sons of William Parker Brooke, a Rugby schoolmaster, and Ruth Mary Brooke, née Cotterill. He was educated at two independent schools in the market town of Rugby, Warwickshire; Hillbrow School and Rugby School.
While travelling in Europe he prepared a thesis entitled John Webster and the Elizabethan Drama, which won him a scholarship to King's College, Cambridge, where he became a member of the Cambridge Apostles, helped found the Marlowe Society drama club and acted in plays including the Cambridge Greek Play.

Brooke made friends among the Bloomsbury group of writers, some of whom admired his talent while others were more impressed by his good looks. Virginia Woolf boasted to Vita Sackville-West of once going skinny-dipping with Brooke in a moonlit pool when they were at Cambridge together.

Brooke belonged to another literary group known as the Georgian Poets and was one of the most important of the Dymock poets, associated with the Gloucestershire village of Dymock where he spent some time before the war. He also lived in the Old Vicarage, Grantchester.

Brooke suffered a severe emotional crisis in 1912, caused by sexual confusion and jealousy, resulting in the breakdown of his long relationship with Ka Cox (Katherine Laird Cox). Brooke's paranoia that Lytton Strachey had schemed to destroy his relationship with Cox by encouraging her to see Henry Lamb precipitated his break with his Bloomsbury Group friends and played a part in his nervous collapse and subsequent rehabilitation trips to Germany.

As part of his recuperation, Brooke toured the United States and Canada to write travel diaries for the Westminster Gazette. He took the long way home, sailing across the Pacific and staying some months in the South Seas. Much later it was revealed that he may have fathered a daughter with a Tahitian woman named Taatamata with whom he seems to have enjoyed his most complete emotional relationship. Brooke fell heavily in love several times with both men and women, although his bisexuality was edited out of his life by his first literary executor. Many more people were in love with him. Brooke was romantically involved with the actress Cathleen Nesbitt and was once engaged to Noel Olivier, whom he met, when she was aged 15, at the progressive Bedales School.

Brooke was an inspiration to poet John Gillespie Magee, Jr., author of the poem "High Flight". Magee idolised Brooke and wrote a poem about him ("Sonnet to Rupert Brooke"). Magee also won the same poetry prize at Rugby School which Brooke had won 34 years earlier.

As a war poet Brooke came to public attention in 1915 when The Times Literary Supplement quoted two of his five sonnets (IV: The Dead and V: The Soldier) in full on 11 March and his sonnet V: The Soldier was read from the pulpit of St Paul's Cathedral on Easter Sunday (4 April). Brooke's most famous collection of poetry, containing all five sonnets, 1914 & Other Poems, was first published in May 1915 and, in testament to his popularity, ran to 11 further impressions that year and by June 1918 had reached its 24th impression; a process undoubtedly fueled through posthumous interest.
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Books by Rupert Brooke

Average rating: 4.11 · 193 ratings · 25 reviews · 33 distinct works

	The Collected Poems 4.19 avg rating — 93 ratings — published 1918 — 50 editions	My rating:
	The Complete Poems 4.33 avg rating — 27 ratings — published 1932 — 4 editions	My rating:
	1914, and Other Poems 3.59 avg rating — 22 ratings — published 1999 — 7 editions	My rating:
	Poetical Works 3.90 avg rating — 10 ratings — published 1970 — 2 editions	My rating:
	Lithuania by Rupert Brooke, William-Alan Landes (Editor) 3.60 avg rating — 10 ratings — published 1997 — 6 editions	My rating:
	Rupert Brooke & Wilfred Owen Selected Poems 4.60 avg rating — 5 ratings	My rating:
	Letters from America by Rupert Brooke, Benjamin Markovits (Foreword) 4.00 avg rating — 4 ratings — published 1916 — 28 editions	My rating:
	John Webster and the Elizabethan Drama by Rupert Brooke, Edward Howard Marsh 5.00 avg rating — 1 rating — published 2009 — 9 editions	My rating:
	Rupert Brooke: A Reappraisal and Selection by Rupert Brooke, Timothy Rogers (Editor) 5.00 avg rating — 1 rating — published 1971 — 3 editions	My rating:
	The Old Vicarage, Grantchester by Rupert Brooke, Noel Rooke 4.00 avg rating — 1 rating — published 2010	My rating: