Norman Gale

Norman Rowland Gale (4 March 1862 – 7 October 1942) was a poet, novelist and reviewer, who published many books over a period of nearly fifty years.^[1]

Gale was born in Kew, Surrey. He entered Exeter College, Oxford in 1880 and graduated in 1884.^[2] He was a teacher for some years, but in 1892 he began writing full-time.^[3] His poems "Betrothed" and "The Call" appeared in The Yellow Book.^[4]^[5] His best-known poem is probably "The Country Faith",^[6] which is in The Oxford Book of English Verse. In the United States, Louis Untermeyer included it in his anthology Modern British Poetry, and, with a change of title to "Life in the Country", it opened the second reader in Cora Wilson Stewart's series, Country Life Readers.^[7]

For the last two years of his life Gale lived in Headley Down, Hampshire, where he died at the age of eighty.^[8]

Publications

A Country Muse, 1892; reprinted with additions as A Country Muse: First Series, 1894
A Country Muse: New Series, 1893; reprinted with additions as A Country Muse: Second Series, 1895
Orchard Songs, [1893]
A June Romance [novel], 1894
Cricket Songs, 1894
All Expenses Paid, 1895
Songs for Little People, 1896
(ed.) Poems by John Clare, 1901
Barty's Star [novel], 1903
More Cricket Songs, 1905
A Book of Quatrains, 1909
Song in September, 1912
Solitude, 1913
Collected Poems, 1914
The Candid Cuckoo, 1918
A Merry-go-Round of Song, 1919
Verse in Bloom, 1925
A Flight of Fancies, 1926
Messrs Bat and Ball, 1930
Close of Play, 1936
Remembrances, 1937
Love-in-a-Mist, 1939

References

^ "Norman Rowland Gale". allpoetry.com. All Poetry. Retrieved 16 January 2015.
^ Michael Seeney, A Six Foot Three Nightingale: Norman Gale, 1862–1942: A Biographical Essay and Check-List (Oxford: Rivendale Press, 1998), p. 3
^ Louis Untermeyer (ed.), Modern British Poetry: A Critical Introduction, 3rd revised edition (New York: Harcourt, Brace and Company, 1930), p. 278
^ "Betrothed", The Yellow Book, Volume 2 (July 1894), p. 227
^ "The Call", The Yellow Book, Volume 5 (April 1895), pp. 280–282
^ "The Country Faith" at bartleby.com
^ Jane Greer, "Literacy, Learning and Letters: Cora Wilson Stewart's Moonlight Schools, 1911–1930", Midwest Modern Language Association (2000)
^ Hampshire Telegraph and Post (23 October 1942), p. 8