John Freeman (poet)
John Frederick Freeman was an English poet and essayist, who gave up a successful career in insurance to write full-time.
He was born in London, and started as an office boy aged 13. He was a close friend of Walter de la Mare from 1907, who lobbied hard with Edward Marsh to get Freeman into the Georgian Poetry series; with eventual success. De la Mare's biographer Theresa Whistler describes him as "tall, gangling, ugly, solemn, punctilious".
He won the Hawthornden Prize in 1920 with Poems 1909-1920. His Last Hours was set to music by Ivor Gurney.
Works
Fifty Poems Happy is England Presage of Victory Stone Trees The Moderns: Essays in Literary Criticism ; essays on George Bernard Shaw, H. G. Wells, Thomas Hardy, Maurice Maeterlinck, Henry James, Joseph Conrad, Coventry Patmore, Francis Thompson, and Robert Bridges.Memories of Childhood and other Poems Poems 1909-1920 Music The Red Path, A Narrative, And The Wounded Bird A Portrait of George Moore in a Study of his Work The Grove and Other Poems Prince Absalom Solomon and Balkis Collected Poems Last Poems John Freeman's Letters posthumous; edited by Gertrude Freeman & Sir John Squire