Walter de La Mare Biography Quotes 3 Report mistakes

Early Life and Education
Walter John de la Mare was born on 25 April 1873 in Charlton, then a village in Kent, England. His family was of Huguenot descent, and the mix of an old European heritage with an English upbringing shaped his lifelong preoccupation with memory, dream, and the unseen. He was educated at St Pauls Cathedral School in London, where he sang in the choir. The musical rigor of chorister life and the daily encounter with liturgy and echoing spaces left a mark on his sense of cadence and atmosphere. Family finances were modest, and he left formal schooling young, entering office work in the City of London.

Beginnings as a Writer
From 1890 he worked as a clerk at the Anglo-American Oil Company. Long hours and routine did not stop him from writing at night and on weekends. He first published under the pseudonym Walter Ramal, a near anagram of his surname, contributing verses and short tales to periodicals. His earliest book, Songs of Childhood (1902), bore that pen name and already displayed his hallmark blend of lullaby-like rhythms and eerie undertones. Recognition grew slowly, but with the encouragement of literary friends and patrons he secured a small Civil List pension in 1908, which allowed him to leave clerical work and devote himself to literature.

Poet of the Uncanny and the Childlike
De la Mare became one of the central poetic voices associated with the Georgian generation. He appeared in the Georgian Poetry anthologies edited by Edward Marsh, which also featured contemporaries such as Rupert Brooke and Edward Thomas, placing him in a circle facilitated by Harold Monros Poetry Bookshop. His most celebrated lyric, The Listeners (1912), brought him wide attention: its mysterious midnight visitation, hushed questions, and unanswered knocking crystallized his interest in thresholds between worlds. Collections like The Listeners and Other Poems (1912) and Peacock Pie (1913) confirmed his reputation. For many readers, Peacock Pie became a touchstone of 20th-century childrens verse, playful on the surface yet edged with wistfulness.

Prose Fiction and Tales of Awe
Even as he refined his verse, de la Mare wrote fiction that explored possession, doubles, and the spectral. The Return (1910) dramatized a mans disturbing sense of being claimed by another personality. His childrens fantasy The Three Mulla-Mulgars (1910), sometimes known as The Three Royal Monkeys, sent three brothers on a mythic journey that combined quest romance with nursery-rhyme enchantment. Short stories such as Seatons Aunt and later All Hallows are masterpieces of quiet supernatural literature: rather than shock, they create a patient, accumulating dread through nuance, silence, and an almost musical pacing. These tales influenced later writers of the weird and remain widely anthologized.

Anthologist, Critic, and Man of Letters
De la Mare was also a meticulous anthologist and essayist. Come Hither (1923), his capacious and annotated anthology for young readers and families, revealed his taste for ballad, nursery verse, and English lyric across centuries, and introduced many households to a broader poetic tradition. He wrote reflective studies and portraits of fellow writers, including books on Lewis Carroll and Rudyard Kipling, and essays that balanced tact with insight. Such work kept him in conversation, directly and indirectly, with figures ranging from Thomas Hardy to scholars and critics who valued his patient, humane reading of texts.

Major Works and Recognition
Among his many books, several stand out for their continuing presence in classrooms and libraries: The Listeners and Other Poems; Peacock Pie; and the novel Memoirs of a Midget (1921), an intricate psychological narrative that won the James Tait Black Memorial Prize. Later collections of verse and stories returned again and again to images of sleep, the moon, owls, doorways, and the fragile borders of childhood. Composers responded to his lyric gift; Benjamin Britten, among others, set several de la Mare poems to music, amplifying their songlike qualities for new audiences.

Style and Themes
De la Mares art listens closely to the faintest murmurs of experience. He favored common words, crisp rhythms, and lullaby meters, yet the effect is rarely simple. His poems and tales draw power from suggestion: a knock no one answers, footsteps fading on stairs, a room that seems to remember. He trusted implication and the emotional life of sound. Memory and dream, childhood and age, the ordinary and the otherworldly are not opposites in his work but communicating rooms. He never abandoned narrative clarity, yet he gave space for readers to discover the unsaid. That reserve, and his attentiveness to quiet emotion, distinguished him from more declamatory contemporaries.

Personal Life and Literary Circles
In 1899 he married Elfrida Ingpen, whose support was central to the stability of his household during the long years when poetry alone could not guarantee security. Their family life, while kept private, nourished his abiding sympathy for children and the domestic scenes that so often appear in his verse. In Londons literary world he moved among editors, poets, and booksellers who helped shape early 20th-century taste. Edward Marshs advocacy placed him alongside Rupert Brooke and Edward Thomas in a cohort that sought clarity and intimacy in verse. At Harold Monros Poetry Bookshop he read, listened, and remained a courteous, steady presence across years of changing fashions.

Later Years
He continued to publish through the interwar period and after 1945, assembling new poems and revisiting earlier themes with an even greater simplicity and inwardness. In 1947 he suffered a severe stroke that curtailed travel and public appearances, but he kept writing as health allowed, revising, selecting, and arranging collections with the careful ear that had marked his youth. In 1953 he was appointed to the Order of Merit, an acknowledgment by the British state of his long and distinguished service to letters.

Death and Legacy
Walter de la Mare died on 22 June 1956 in Twickenham, Middlesex. He left behind a body of work unusually coherent in mood and unusually hospitable to readers of different ages. Children meet him first in lullabies, riddles, and playful catalogues; older readers return to find the uncanny and the philosophical gently folded into those same forms. His presence in anthologies, especially through Come Hither, reshaped how families and schools shared poetry. The best of his ghostly tales stand with the classics of subtle supernatural fiction, while his lyrics continue to invite composers, illustrators, and new poets into conversation. In the company of friends and admirers such as Edward Marsh, Harold Monro, Rupert Brooke, and Edward Thomas, he helped define an English lyricism that is intimate without being confessional, visionary without leaving the common world behind. His work remains a quiet testament to the power of listening: to the past, to childhood, and to the small sounds by which the imagination discovers its dwelling.

Our collection contains 3 quotes who is written by Walter, under the main topics: Wisdom - Poetry - Time.