Masefield, John

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English poet and novelist. His early years in the merchant navy inspired Salt Water Ballads (1902) and two further volumes of poetry, and several adventure novels; he also wrote children's books, such as The Midnight Folk (1927) and The Box of Delights (1935), as well as plays. The Everlasting Mercy (1911), characterized by its forcefully colloquial language, and Reynard the Fox (1919) are long verse narratives. He was poet laureate from 1930.

Born in Ledbury, Herefordshire, Masefield went to sea at the age of 15 and made the voyage round Cape Horn. He lived in the USA for three years and worked as a barman in a New York saloon and in a carpet factory. Returning to England, he took a job as a bank clerk and then joined the Manchester Guardian before settling in London. He attracted notice by such volumes of poetry as Salt Water Ballads, but fame and notoriety came with the verse narrative of a drunkard's conversion The Everlasting Mercy, which shocked critics with its strong, often vulgar, colloquial tone. He wrote other long narrative poems, a form which he revived in England with some success, including The Widow in the Bye Street (1912), The Daffodil Fields (1913), and Dauber (1913), an epic poem of personality conflicts at sea. Reynard the Fox records a fox hunt and is notable for its Chaucerian character vignettes.

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