Poems of Herbert Edwin Clarke

Volume containing working drafts and copies of approximately ninety published and unpublished poems written by H.E Clarke over the course of twenty years.

Herbert Edwin Clarke was born in 1852 in Chatteris in the Cambridgeshire fens, the son of William, grocer and draper of Slade End. According to the census register he began his career as a commercial clerk at Elder & Co., married in 1883 and moved to Forest Hill, Kent, then onto Lewisham and Beckenham, where in 1901 he is noted as a 'secretary to public companies'. He was connected to the Pre-Raphaelite circle through his friendship with the blind poet Philip Bourke Marston and poet James Thomson. Clarke published four collections of poems within his lifetime his first, 'Songs in Exile and other poems', in 1879. He died in 1912.

Source: Archivist of Cambridgeshire County Record Office and other sources

Open. Access to all registered researchers.

Acquired from bookseller.

Please see full catalogue for more information.

Permission to make any published use of any material from the collection must be sought in advance in writing from the Director of Special Collections (email: special-collections@contacts.bham.ac.uk). Identification of copyright holders of unpublished material is often difficult. Special Collections will assist where possible with identifying copyright owners, but responsibility for ensuring copyright clearance rests with the user of the material.

Custodial history unknown.

Special Collections also holds two published volumes of H.E. Clarke's works which were bought with this manuscript volume; 'Tannhauser and other poems' 1896; 'Songs in Exile and other poems' 1879.