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The Letters of Rupert Brooke
Rupert Brooke died in 1915 at the age of twenty-seven in a hospital ship in the Aegean Sea and was buried on the Greek island of Skyros.
Brooke was a prolific letter writer and most of his correspondents kept his letters. These have been collected during the last thirty years by one of his oldest friends, Geoffrey Keynes. There are letters to his mother and to most of his more intimate friends, including, among many others, Frances Cornford, Gwen and Jacques Raverat, Hugh Dalton, E.J. Dent, Katharine Cox, Edward Marsh, Cathleen Nesbitt, and the editor. The letters, ranging from his Rugby School days in 1904 almost to the day of his death in April 1915, give a complete picture of his short life - his loves and his hates, his moods, hopes and despairs, his views on poetry, life and youth. They are lively and witty; sometimes affected, sometimes rather shocking; not always entirely truthful.
With the help of an introduction, footnotes and a short explanatory preface at the beginning of each year, the letters virtually tell the story of Brooke's life in his own words; and give a picture of a young man very much of his period. But the young man was a poet, with all the sensibility and awareness of the artist; often wise, sometimes very foolish with the foolishness of youth.
The scenes are Rugby, Italy, Cambridge, Grantchester, Lulworth on the Dorset coast, Germany, Canada, the South Seas, army training centers in England and the Aegean. The series of letters ends with Denis Browne's detailed account, written to Sir Edward Marsh, of Brooke's death and burial on Skyros.
--From the 1968 American edition.
Brooke was a prolific letter writer and most of his correspondents kept his letters. These have been collected during the last thirty years by one of his oldest friends, Geoffrey Keynes. There are letters to his mother and to most of his more intimate friends, including, among many others, Frances Cornford, Gwen and Jacques Raverat, Hugh Dalton, E.J. Dent, Katharine Cox, Edward Marsh, Cathleen Nesbitt, and the editor. The letters, ranging from his Rugby School days in 1904 almost to the day of his death in April 1915, give a complete picture of his short life - his loves and his hates, his moods, hopes and despairs, his views on poetry, life and youth. They are lively and witty; sometimes affected, sometimes rather shocking; not always entirely truthful.
With the help of an introduction, footnotes and a short explanatory preface at the beginning of each year, the letters virtually tell the story of Brooke's life in his own words; and give a picture of a young man very much of his period. But the young man was a poet, with all the sensibility and awareness of the artist; often wise, sometimes very foolish with the foolishness of youth.
The scenes are Rugby, Italy, Cambridge, Grantchester, Lulworth on the Dorset coast, Germany, Canada, the South Seas, army training centers in England and the Aegean. The series of letters ends with Denis Browne's detailed account, written to Sir Edward Marsh, of Brooke's death and burial on Skyros.
--From the 1968 American edition.
709 pages, Hardcover
First published January 1, 1968
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About the author
Rupert Brooke
233 books114 followersRupert Chawner Brooke (middle name sometimes given as Chaucer) 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 W.B. 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.
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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September 11, 2014
I usually avoid reading other people's letters and it is weird reading only half of the conversation, but what emerges from Rupert Brooke's letters is a lively mind and a sense of humor and it basically makes you feel so much more profoundly the tragedy of his loss at such a young age. A few of his poems appear in these letters, and they are for the most part great. His friend Geoffrey Keynes edited the letters and one wonders what he left out, but there is still a lot here to ponder. There are sections of photos of Rupert and his circle. The writing is where you really get a sense of this vibrant spirit and brilliant mind. It's almost as much a tragedy that he became a symbol of lost youth because death colors everything about him, everything he ever wrote. Even funny lines take on a darker meaning. Still, I would recommend this collection of letters if only for readers to get a well-rounded sense of Rupert Brooke as a person and a writer who had a lot to say and not enough time to say it all.
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