Gordon Bottomley
Encyclopedia
Gordon Bottomley was an English poet, known particularly for his verse dramas. He was partly disabled by tubercular illness. His main influences were the later Victorian Romantic poets
, the Pre-Raphaelites and William Morris
.
, Yorkshire
in 1874, the only child of Maria and Alfred Bottomley. He was educated firstly at home by his mother and then at the local Grammar School
. Aged seven, Bottomley contracted a tubercular illness that would effect him for the rest of his life. As a result he was invalided for long periods of time and was unable to travel widely or live in a town.
Bottomley became a junior clerk at the Craven Bank in Keighley at the age of 16. However, after an illness in 1891 he was transferred to the Bradford
branch and he first visited the theatre and saw the Oscar Wilde
play Lady Windermere’s Fan. This stimulated his interest in plays.
Following another bout of illness in 1892 Bottomley left the bank and moved to Cartmel
, Lancashire
to live a life of passionate intense meditation and contemplation and began writing poetry. It was here in 1895 that he met Emily Burton and they married in 1905. The couple lived from 1914 in Silverdale
, near Carnforth
until their deaths. Bottomley died in 1948, outliving his wife by less than a year.
and even more so by Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood
. His first book The Mickle Drede and Other Verses was printed privately at Kendal
in 1896.
Bottomley included many famous writers, poets and artists as friends, whom he kept in contact with mainly through letters. He did make occasional visits to London, and also received visitors at his home. The most notable of these friendships was with the artist Paul Nash
. The two men where brought together in 1910 by Nash’s love of poetry and Bottomley’s extensive knowledge of painting. Bottomley encouraged the young artist and in exchange Nash made several designs for Bottomley’s plays that he exhibited or used as illustrations. Despite increasingly divergent tastes in art, their friendship survived and a prolific life-long correspondence between the two men was published in 1955.
Bottomley studied the work of artists and was a dedicated collector. He bought artworks when he could afford to and his friends also gave him their art in gratitude for his support and friendship. In 1949 Bottomley and his wife Emily gave their personal art collection of six hundred paintings, prints and drawings to the Tullie House Museum and Art Gallery in Carlisle, Cumbria
. The bequest included a nationally important collection of works by the Pre-Raphaelites including pictures by Dante Gabriel Rossetti
, Edward Burne-Jones
, William Morris
, Arthur Hughes
, Ford Madox Brown
, Elizabeth Siddal
and Simeon Solomon
. The collection also included work from artists of other genre including those of Stanley Spencer
, Samuel Palmer
, Albert Moore
, Frederic, Lord Leighton
, Henri Fantin-Latour
, Lucien Pissarro
, William Nicholson
, Walter Crane
, Charles Conder
, Jessie Marion King
, William Morris's daughter May Morris
, William Rothenstein
, Charles Ricketts
, and of course Paul Nash
.
Bottomley edited the poetry of Isaac Rosenberg
in 1922, whom as a correspondent he had encouraged from 1915. The composer Edgar Bainton
(1880–1956) was a close associate, and set The Crier by Night to music.
Romantic poetry
Romanticism, a philosophical, literary, artistic and cultural era which began in the mid/late-1700s as a reaction against the prevailing Enlightenment ideals of the day , also influenced poetry...
, the Pre-Raphaelites and William Morris
William Morris
William Morris 24 March 18343 October 1896 was an English textile designer, artist, writer, and socialist associated with the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood and the English Arts and Crafts Movement...
.
Background
He was born in KeighleyKeighley
Keighley is a town and civil parish within the metropolitan borough of the City of Bradford in West Yorkshire, England. It is situated northwest of Bradford and is at the confluence of the River Aire and the River Worth...
, Yorkshire
Yorkshire
Yorkshire is a historic county of northern England and the largest in the United Kingdom. Because of its great size in comparison to other English counties, functions have been increasingly undertaken over time by its subdivisions, which have also been subject to periodic reform...
in 1874, the only child of Maria and Alfred Bottomley. He was educated firstly at home by his mother and then at the local Grammar School
Grammar school
A grammar school is one of several different types of school in the history of education in the United Kingdom and some other English-speaking countries, originally a school teaching classical languages but more recently an academically-oriented secondary school.The original purpose of mediaeval...
. Aged seven, Bottomley contracted a tubercular illness that would effect him for the rest of his life. As a result he was invalided for long periods of time and was unable to travel widely or live in a town.
Bottomley became a junior clerk at the Craven Bank in Keighley at the age of 16. However, after an illness in 1891 he was transferred to the Bradford
Bradford
Bradford lies at the heart of the City of Bradford, a metropolitan borough of West Yorkshire, in Northern England. It is situated in the foothills of the Pennines, west of Leeds, and northwest of Wakefield. Bradford became a municipal borough in 1847, and received its charter as a city in 1897...
branch and he first visited the theatre and saw the Oscar Wilde
Oscar Wilde
Oscar Fingal O'Flahertie Wills Wilde was an Irish writer and poet. After writing in different forms throughout the 1880s, he became one of London's most popular playwrights in the early 1890s...
play Lady Windermere’s Fan. This stimulated his interest in plays.
Following another bout of illness in 1892 Bottomley left the bank and moved to Cartmel
Cartmel
Cartmel is a village in Cumbria, England, situated north-west of Grange-over-Sands and close to the River Eea. Historically it was in Lancashire; boundary changes brought it into the newly created county of Cumbria in 1974, yet keeping it within the boundaries of the traditional County Palatine...
, Lancashire
Lancashire
Lancashire is a non-metropolitan county of historic origin in the North West of England. It takes its name from the city of Lancaster, and is sometimes known as the County of Lancaster. Although Lancaster is still considered to be the county town, Lancashire County Council is based in Preston...
to live a life of passionate intense meditation and contemplation and began writing poetry. It was here in 1895 that he met Emily Burton and they married in 1905. The couple lived from 1914 in Silverdale
Silverdale, Lancashire
Silverdale is a village and civil parish within the City of Lancaster in Lancashire, England. The village stands on Morecambe Bay, near the border with Cumbria, north west of Carnforth and north of Lancaster. The parish had a population of 1,545 recorded in the 2001 census.Silverdale forms part...
, near Carnforth
Carnforth
- References :...
until their deaths. Bottomley died in 1948, outliving his wife by less than a year.
Influences
Bottomley began writing poetry in the 1890s and was influenced by the Romantic poetsRomantic poetry
Romanticism, a philosophical, literary, artistic and cultural era which began in the mid/late-1700s as a reaction against the prevailing Enlightenment ideals of the day , also influenced poetry...
and even more so by Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood
Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood
The Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood was a group of English painters, poets, and critics, founded in 1848 by William Holman Hunt, John Everett Millais and Dante Gabriel Rossetti...
. His first book The Mickle Drede and Other Verses was printed privately at Kendal
Kendal
Kendal, anciently known as Kirkby in Kendal or Kirkby Kendal, is a market town and civil parish within the South Lakeland District of Cumbria, England...
in 1896.
Bottomley included many famous writers, poets and artists as friends, whom he kept in contact with mainly through letters. He did make occasional visits to London, and also received visitors at his home. The most notable of these friendships was with the artist Paul Nash
Paul Nash (artist)
Paul Nash was a British landscape painter, surrealist and war artist, as well as a book-illustrator, writer and designer of applied art. He was the older brother of the artist John Nash.-Early life:...
. The two men where brought together in 1910 by Nash’s love of poetry and Bottomley’s extensive knowledge of painting. Bottomley encouraged the young artist and in exchange Nash made several designs for Bottomley’s plays that he exhibited or used as illustrations. Despite increasingly divergent tastes in art, their friendship survived and a prolific life-long correspondence between the two men was published in 1955.
Bottomley studied the work of artists and was a dedicated collector. He bought artworks when he could afford to and his friends also gave him their art in gratitude for his support and friendship. In 1949 Bottomley and his wife Emily gave their personal art collection of six hundred paintings, prints and drawings to the Tullie House Museum and Art Gallery in Carlisle, Cumbria
Cumbria
Cumbria , is a non-metropolitan county in North West England. The county and Cumbria County Council, its local authority, came into existence in 1974 after the passage of the Local Government Act 1972. Cumbria's largest settlement and county town is Carlisle. It consists of six districts, and in...
. The bequest included a nationally important collection of works by the Pre-Raphaelites including pictures by Dante Gabriel Rossetti
Dante Gabriel Rossetti
Dante Gabriel Rossetti was an English poet, illustrator, painter and translator. He founded the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood in 1848 with William Holman Hunt and John Everett Millais, and was later to be the main inspiration for a second generation of artists and writers influenced by the movement,...
, Edward Burne-Jones
Edward Burne-Jones
Sir Edward Coley Burne-Jones, 1st Baronet was a British artist and designer closely associated with the later phase of the Pre-Raphaelite movement, who worked closely with William Morris on a wide range of decorative arts as a founding partner in Morris, Marshall, Faulkner, and Company...
, William Morris
William Morris
William Morris 24 March 18343 October 1896 was an English textile designer, artist, writer, and socialist associated with the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood and the English Arts and Crafts Movement...
, Arthur Hughes
Arthur Hughes (artist)
Arthur Hughes , was an English painter and illustrator associated with the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood. He is the uncle of the English painter Edward Robert Hughes.-Biography:Hughes was born in London...
, Ford Madox Brown
Ford Madox Brown
Ford Madox Brown was an English painter of moral and historical subjects, notable for his distinctively graphic and often Hogarthian version of the Pre-Raphaelite style. Arguably, his most notable painting was Work...
, Elizabeth Siddal
Elizabeth Siddal
Elizabeth Eleanor Siddal was an English artists' model, poet and artist who was painted and drawn extensively by artists of the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood, including Walter Deverell, William Holman Hunt, John Everett Millais and most of Dante Gabriel Rossetti's early paintings of women.-Early...
and Simeon Solomon
Simeon Solomon
Simeon Solomon was an English Pre-Raphaelite painter-Biography:...
. The collection also included work from artists of other genre including those of Stanley Spencer
Stanley Spencer
Sir Stanley Spencer was an English painter. Much of his work depicts Biblical scenes, from miracles to Crucifixion, happening not in the Holy Land but in the small Thames-side village where he was born and spent most of his life...
, Samuel Palmer
Samuel Palmer
Samuel Palmer was a British landscape painter, etcher and printmaker. He was also a prolific writer. Palmer was a key figure in Romanticism in Britain and produced visionary pastoral paintings.-Early life:...
, Albert Moore
Albert Joseph Moore
Albert Joseph Moore was an English painter, known for his depictions of langorous female figures set against the luxury and decadence of the classical world....
, Frederic, Lord Leighton
Frederic Leighton, 1st Baron Leighton
Frederic Leighton, 1st Baron Leighton PRA , known as Sir Frederic Leighton, Bt, between 1886 and 1896, was an English painter and sculptor. His works depicted historical, biblical and classical subject matter...
, Henri Fantin-Latour
Henri Fantin-Latour
Henri Fantin-Latour was a French painter and lithographer best known for his flower paintings and group portraits of Parisian artists and writers.-Biography:...
, Lucien Pissarro
Lucien Pissarro
Lucien Pissarro was a landscape painter, printmaker, wood engraver and designer and printer of fine books. His landscape paintings employ techniques of Impressionism and Neo-Impressionism, but he also exhibited with Les XX. Apart from his landscapes he painted only a few still-lifes and family...
, William Nicholson
William Nicholson (artist)
Sir William Newzam Prior Nicholson was an English painter of still-life, landscape and portraits, also known for his work as a wood-engraver, illustrator, author of children's books and designer for the theatre....
, Walter Crane
Walter Crane
Walter Crane was an English artist and book illustrator. He is considered to be the most prolific and influential children’s book creator of his generation and, along with Randolph Caldecott and Kate Greenaway, one of the strongest contributors to the child's nursery motif that the genre of...
, Charles Conder
Charles Conder
Charles Edward Conder was an English-born painter, lithographer and designer. He emigrated to Australia and was a key figure in the Heidelberg School, arguably the beginning of a distinctively Australian tradition in Western art.-Early life:Conder was born in Tottenham, Middlesex, the second son,...
, Jessie Marion King
Jessie Marion King
Jessie Marion King was a Scottish painter and illustrator mostly of children's books. She was married to E. A. Taylor....
, William Morris's daughter May Morris
May Morris
Mary "May" Morris was an English artisan, embroidery designer, socialist, and editor. She was the younger daughter of the Pre-Raphaelite artist and designer William Morris and his wife and artists' model Jane Morris....
, William Rothenstein
William Rothenstein
Sir William Rothenstein was an English painter, draughtsman and writer on art.-Life and work:William Rothenstein was born into a German-Jewish family in Bradford, West Yorkshire. His father, Moritz, emigrated from Germany in 1859 to work in Bradford's burgeoning textile industry...
, Charles Ricketts
Charles Ricketts
Charles de Sousy Ricketts was a versatile English artist, illustrator, author and printer, and is best known for his work as book designer and typographer from 1896 to 1904 with the Vale Press, and his work in the theatre as a set and costume designer.-Life and career:Ricketts was born in Geneva...
, and of course Paul Nash
Paul Nash (artist)
Paul Nash was a British landscape painter, surrealist and war artist, as well as a book-illustrator, writer and designer of applied art. He was the older brother of the artist John Nash.-Early life:...
.
Bottomley edited the poetry of Isaac Rosenberg
Isaac Rosenberg
Isaac Rosenberg was an English poet of the First World War who was considered to be one of the greatest of all English war poets...
in 1922, whom as a correspondent he had encouraged from 1915. The composer Edgar Bainton
Edgar Bainton
Edgar Leslie Bainton was a British composer, most celebrated for his church music. Perhaps his most famous piece is the liturgical anthem And I saw a new heaven, but during recent years Bainton's other musical works - neglected for decades - have been increasingly often heard in the concert...
(1880–1956) was a close associate, and set The Crier by Night to music.
Poetry
- The Mickle Drede and Other Verses (1896)
- Poems as White Nights (1899)
- The Gate of Smaragdus (1904).
- Chambers of Imagery (1907, 1912)
- A Vision of Giorgione (1910)
- Poems of Thirty Years (1925)
- Darn and lies
Plays
- The Crier by Night (1902)
- Midsummer Eve (1905)
- Laodice and Danaë (1909)
- The Riding to Lithend (1909)
- King Lear's Wife (1920)
- Gruach (1921)
- Britain's Daughter (1921)
- Scenes and Plays (1929)
- Festival Preludes (1930)
- A Carol for Christmas - Day before Dawn (1930)
- Lyric Plays (1932)
- The Acts of St. Peter (1933)
- Choric Plays (1939)
- Kate Kennedy (1945)
- Poems and Plays (1953)