Back in 1917, Virginia Woolf expressed surprise that anyone as good as John Davidson should "be so little famous." This book, the first biography of Davidson (1857-1909) in more than thirty years, shows the poet to be a key figure in the emergence of literary modernism and a major influence on the ...
Back in 1917, Virginia Woolf expressed surprise that anyone as good as John Davidson should "be so little famous." This book, the first biography of Davidson (1857-1909) in more than thirty years, shows the poet to be a key figure in the emergence of literary modernism and a major influence on the younger poets of his day, particularly T.S. Eliot. Sloan presents a wealth of new information about Davidson's life, including his struggles in London as a penniless author. The picture that emerges is not simply that of a late Victorian rebel, but of a proto-Modernist who pioneered a new idiom and subject matter for twentieth-century verse.