Masefield encouraged the continued development of English literature and poetry, and began the annual awarding of the Royal Medals for Poetry for a first or second published edition of poetry by a poet under the age of 35.Īmong his best-known children's novels are The Midnight Folk and The Box of Delights. After that he wrote steadily poems, stories, and plays.Īfter his appointment as Poet Laureate, Masefield was awarded the Order of Merit by King George V and many honorary degrees from British universities, in 1937 being elected as President of the Society of Authors. In 1902 Masefield published his first volume of poems, 'Salt-Water Ballads'. He wrote about the land too, about typically English things like fox hunting, racing, and outdoor life. He returned to them again and again in his poems and stories. In 1897 he returned to England determined to succeed as a writer. He later wrote about that period of his life in an autobiographical work, 'In the Mill', published in 1941. At one time, in 1895, he worked for a few months as a sort of third assistant bar-keeper and dish-washer in Luke O'Connor's saloon, the Columbia Hotel, in New York City.
He left the sea and spent several years living in the United States, working chiefly in a carpet factory. In Chile he became ill and had to return to England by steamer. After two and a half years on the school ship he was apprenticed aboard a sailing ship that was bound for Chile by way of Cape Horn. At 13 he boarded the training ship Conway moored in the river Mersey.
Young Masefield wanted to be a merchant marine officer. After his father's death he was looked after by an uncle. Masefield was born in Ledbury, Herefordshire, England.
He is best known for his poems of the sea, Salt-Water Ballads (1902, including "Sea Fever" and "Cargoes"), and for his long narrative poems, such as The Everlasting Mercy (1911), which shocked literary orthodoxy with its phrases of a colloquial coarseness hitherto unknown in 20th-century English verse. John Masefield (June 1, 1878-May 12, 1967) was an English poet, writer and the Poet Laureate of the United Kingdom from 1930 until 1967.
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