Lascelles Abercrombie

Learn about Lascelles Abercrombie (1881–1938) — British poet, critic, and member of the Dymock poets. Explore his biography, major works, poetic themes, critical theory, and notable quotes.

Introduction

Lascelles Abercrombie (9 January 1881 – 27 October 1938) was an English poet, literary critic, and academic, often associated with the Georgian poetic movement and the circle known as the Dymock poets.

Though not as widely remembered today as some of his contemporaries, Abercrombie made significant contributions to early 20th-century English poetry and the critical understanding of poetic art. His work often wrestled with the tension between the dramatic, symbolic, and lyrical impulses in poetry, exploring the extremes of human experience in verse.

In this article, we will traverse his early years, literary development, critical ideas, legacy, and some of his enduring lines.

Early Life and Family

Lascelles Abercrombie was born in Ashton upon Mersey, Cheshire (near Manchester), England, on 9 January 1881. He was educated at Malvern College and then at Owens College (which later became part of the University of Manchester).

Before fully devoting himself to literature, Abercrombie worked as a journalist (notably for the Liverpool Courier) and reviewed books, which helped sharpen his critical sensibility.

In his personal life, he married Catherine Gwatkin in 1909, and they had several children. Two of his children became distinguished in academic fields:

• David Abercrombie, who became a noted linguist.

• Michael Abercrombie, a cell biologist and embryologist.

His brother, Patrick Abercrombie, was a prominent town planner and architect.

Abercrombie later suffered from health issues, including serious diabetes, which contributed to his death in 1938 in London at age 57.

Literary Career and Major Works

Early Poetry & the Dymock Poets

In the years before World War I, Abercrombie lived in Dymock, Gloucestershire, and became part of a literary community that included Rupert Brooke, Robert Frost, Edward Thomas, John Drinkwater, and Wilfrid Wilson Gibson. This group became known as the Dymock poets.

He contributed to New Numbers, a literary journal published by the Dymock poets, and was included in the Georgian Poetry anthologies, which sought to present a new poetic sensibility rooted in rural and everyday life.

His early poetry collections include:

• Interludes and Poems (1908)

• Mary and the Bramble (1910)

• Deborah (a dramatic poem)

• Emblems of Love (1912)

• Speculative Dialogues (1913)

His poetry often combined drama, symbolic imagery, psychological intensity, and explorations of extremes (ecstasy, anguish, moral confrontation).

Academic and Critical Phase

During World War I, Abercrombie worked as a munitions examiner.

After the war, he entered academia:

• In 1922, he was appointed Professor of English at the University of Leeds, in competition with J. R. R. Tolkien.

• In 1929, he moved to the University of London.

• In 1935, he accepted the Goldsmiths’ Readership at the University of Oxford and became a Fellow of Merton College.

While in academia, he wrote works on poetic theory and aesthetics, such as An Essay Towards a Theory of Art (1922), The Theory of Poetry (1924), Poetry, Its Music and Meaning (1932), and The Idea of Great Poetry (1925).

In 1930, his Collected Poems were published, and his poetic drama The Sale of St. Thomas (1931) is often regarded as among his more mature poetic works.

He also wrote The End of the World (a play) and Four Short Plays (1922), of which The Staircase is sometimes singled out for its more realistic characters and setting.

As a critic, he explored the nature of poetic expression, the role of metaphor, symbolism, and the unity that a poet must impose on chaotic experience.

Style, Themes & Reception

Abercrombie’s poetry is frequently in blank verse (unrhymed iambic pentameter) and dramatic or symbolic in shape.

His themes often involve extremes — suffering, spiritual trials, moral confrontation, existential struggle — rather than quotidian or pastoral scenes.

He tried to preserve lyric intensity even when casting his poems in dramatic or mythic frames.

By the 1930s, however, his style was less in favor with the prevailing currents of modernist poetry, and his work began to fall into relative obscurity.

His Four Short Plays have been considered his more accessible legacy, as they integrate more natural characters and dialogue.

Legacy & Influence

Lascelles Abercrombie’s legacy is somewhat subtle, but still meaningful within English literary history:

• He remains a recognized member of the Dymock poets, a group that bridged Georgian poetry and the onset of modernist sensibilities.

• His critical work influenced thinking about poetic form, symbolism, and how poets impose unity on experience.

• Some of his plays and dramatic poems are still studied, especially The Staircase among his short plays.

• His manuscripts and correspondence are preserved in archives (for example, at the University of Leeds), enabling continued scholarly research.

• Though not a household name today, Abercrombie’s blending of poetic drama and lyric ambition marks him as a distinctive voice of his era.

Famous Quotes by Lascelles Abercrombie

Here are a selection of notable lines and statements that capture Abercrombie’s thought and poetic ambition:

• “But the gravest difficulty, and perhaps the most important, in poetry meant solely for recitation, is the difficulty of achieving verbal beauty, or rather of making verbal beauty tell.”

• “No poet will ever take the written word as a substitute for the spoken word; he knows that it is on the spoken word, and the spoken word only, that his art is founded.”

• “It is more difficult to keep the attention of hearers than of readers.”

• “The balance of private good and general welfare is at the bottom of civilized morals; but the morals of the Heroic Age are founded on individuality, and on nothing else.”

• “That is to say, epic poetry has been invented many times and independently; but, as the needs which prompted the invention have been broadly similar, so the invention itself has been.”

• “The epic poet has behind him a tradition of matter and a tradition of style; and that is what every other poet has behind him too; only, for the epic poet, tradition is rather narrower, rather more strictly compelling.”

These quotations reflect his concern for the oral nature of poetry, the weight of tradition, the struggle for artistic unity, and the moral imagination that underlies epic ambition.

Lessons from Lascelles Abercrombie

From Abercrombie’s life and work, several lessons emerge:

1. Art is both symbolic and expressive. He strove to fuse drama, imagery, and lyric intensity, reminding us that poetry can venture into the symbolic while still touching lived emotion.

2. Tradition and innovation coexist. Abercrombie accepted that poets are shaped by the weight of tradition (epic, mythic, literary) even as they attempt to renew it.

3. The spoken voice matters. His frequent insistence that poetry is grounded in oral/aural experience suggests that poetry is not just for written pages—but first, for human voice and hearing.

4. Ambition may outlast popularity. Although his style lost favor in later decades, his commitment to his vision remains a testament to artistic integrity.

5. Bridging creative and critical work. Abercrombie’s dual role as poet and critic shows how deep reflection on art can complement creative expression.

Conclusion

Lascelles Abercrombie occupies a unique niche in early 20th-century British poetry and criticism. He combined an epic sense of drama, lyric intensity, and intellectual rigor. While his reputation may not loom large today, his contributions—especially in thinking about poetic form, symbolism, tradition, and the oral dimension of verse—still reward rediscovery.

If you want, I can prepare a full timeline of his life, translate this into Vietnamese, or create a visual infographic by era/works. Would you like me to do that?