Richard Thomas Church was an English writer, known as poet and critic; he also wrote novels and verse plays, and three well-received volumes of autobiography.

Life

He was born in London

London

London is the capital city of :England and the :United Kingdom, the largest metropolitan area in the United Kingdom, and the largest urban zone in the European Union by most measures. Located on the River Thames, London has been a major settlement for two millennia, its history going back to its...

, and went to school in Dulwich

Dulwich

Dulwich is an area of South London, England. The settlement is mostly in the London Borough of Southwark with parts in the London Borough of Lambeth...

. He worked as a civil servant, leaving in 1933 to write full time; he became a journalist and reviewer. His first poetry appeared in Robert Blatchford

Robert Blatchford

Robert Peel Glanville Blatchford was a socialist campaigner, journalist and author in the United Kingdom. He was a prominent atheist and opponent of eugenics. He was also an English patriot...

's Clarion, and he contributed verse to periodicals for the rest of his life.

His first post as a literary editor was with the New Leader

Labour Leader

The Labour Leader was a British socialist newspaper published for almost one hundred years. It was later re-named New Leader and Socialist Leader, before finally taking the name Labour Leader again....

, organ of the Independent Labour Party

Independent Labour Party

The Independent Labour Party was a socialist political party in Britain established in 1893. The ILP was affiliated to the Labour Party from 1906 to 1932, when it voted to leave...

. He was director of the Oxford Festival of Spoken Poetry during the 1930s. His much-anthologised World War I

World War I

World War I , which was predominantly called the World War or the Great War from its occurrence until 1939, and the First World War or World War I thereafter, was a major war centred in Europe that began on 28 July 1914 and lasted until 11 November 1918...

poem 'Mud' first appeared in Life and Letters, January 1935.

Poems

• The Flood of Life (1917)
• Philip (1923)
• The Portrait of the Abbot (1926)
• The Dream (1927)
• Theme with Variations (1928)
• Mood without Measure (1928)
• Mary Shelley (1928)
• The Glance Backward (1930)
• Oliver’s Daughter (1930)
• News from the Mountain (1932)
• The Prodigal Father (1933)
• Apple of Concord (1935)
• The Porch (1937)
• Twelve Noon (1936)
• The Solitary Man (1941)
• Twentieth-Century Psalter (1943)
• The Lamp (1946)
• Collected Poems (1948)
• Selected Lyrical Poems (1951)
• The Inheritors (1957)
• North of Rome (1960)
• The Burning Bush (1967)

Novels

• The Stronghold (1939)
• High Summer (1931)
• The Cave (1951)
• The Crab-Apple Tree (1959)

Autobiography

• The Voyage Home (1964)
• Over the Bridge (1955)
• The Golden Sovereign (1957)

Sources

• Author and Book Info.com