Rupert Brooke

1887–1915. English poet, especially famous for his sonnets about the Great War.

Rupert Chawner Brooke was born on 3 August 1887 in Rugby, Warwickshire, as one of three children of the housemaster of Rugby School, William Parker Brooke (1850–1910) and his wife Ruth Mary Brooke. Brooke attended a preparatory school in Hillbrow from 1897-1901 and then went to Rugby School. He started to write poems influenced by the poets of the English decadence. Brooke began to study classics at King's College in Cambridge in 1906 but continued to engage in English Literature. He was seen as handsome and charismatic and joined a lot of different Cambridge groups of which some were homosexual but others also involved women. At the time he also became friends with a lot of members of the Bloomsbury Group like Virginia Woolf. During the time Brooke was very insecure about his sexuality and had several relationships and affairs with men and women which resulted in psychological difficulties. In the following years, he completed his degree, studied in Germany and went on a journey in Italy until he moved to Grantchester in 1909 and acted as housemaster of School Field at Rugby for one term after his father died in 1910. In 1911, Brooke's first collection of poems was published. After he finished his dissertation in 1913, he received a fellowship at King's College. He then travelled to Canada, the United States, New Zealand, the Pacific islands and returned to England in 1914 before the beginning of the Great War. Shortly after he was commissioned into the Royal Naval Division in October 1914 and was part of an expedition. After this experience he wrote five patriotic war sonnets which made him famous in the aftermath although they were eyed critically because of their optimism and idealism towards war. In 1915, he and his division were sailing on their way to Gallipoli when he allegedly contracted septicaemia at sea. Brooke died on 23 April 1915 and was buried on the near island of Skyros. After his death other poems were published in 1915 and 1918, as well as the prose essays "Letters from America" in 1916. Rupert Brooke is especially remembered for his style of poetry, the cultural myth of a charming and good looking poet surrounding him and his war sonnet "The Soldier" (1914).

Sources

BBC. "Rupert Brooke (1887 - 1915)." 10 January 2016 <http://www.bbc.co.uk/history/historic_figures/brooke_rupert.shtml>.

Caesar, Adrian. "Brooke, Rupert Chawner (1887-1915)." Oxford Dictionary of National Biography. 2004. Oxford: Oxford University Press. 10 January 2016 <http://www.oxforddnb.com/view/article/32093?docPos=1>.