Wilfrid Thorley
Wilfrid Charles Thorley was an English poet and translator.
Thorley was the son of a well-to-do retired draper and magistrate, and his young wife. He was twice married, first to Katherine E Dunn in 1914, and after her death in 1925, second to Gertrude M Neville in 1937.
He was educated privately, then at the Liverpool Institute and Grenoble University. However, he said that he learnt most while teaching English to foreign students in Sweden, Belgium, France and Italy, during the ten years preceding World War I.
His best-known poem is "Chant for Reapers", due to its inclusion in the Oxford Book of English Verse.
Publications
A Primer of English for Foreign Students, 1910Confessional, and other Poems, reprinted 1911An English Reader for Foreign Students, 1913Florentine Vignettes, Being Some Metrical Letters of the Late Vernon Arnold Slade, edited by Wilfrid Thorley, 1914 Paul Verlaine, 1914Fleurs-de-Lys:: A Book of French Poetry Freely Translated into English Verse, 1920Cloud-Cuckoo-Land: a Child's Book of Verses, 1923The Londoner's Chariot. , 1925A Bouquet from France: one hundred French poems with English translations in verse and brief notes, 1926Maypole Market: a Child's Book of Verses, 1927Cartwheels and Catkins: Verses for Girls and Boys, 1930A Year in England for Foreign Students, 1930The Happy Colt, and other verses, 1940Barleycomb Billy, and other rhymes, 1943The French Muse, 50 Examples with Biographical and Critical Notes, 1944As Harley Quinn:A Caboodle of Beasts, 1945Quinn's quiz: Being rhymed riddles on a variety of subjects for young and old, 1957