The following sources were used in the compilation of this description: Richard J. Stonesifer, W. H. Davies: A Critical Biography (London, 1963); Oxford Dictionary of National Biography WWW site, viewed 28 September 2011; Sotheby's, English Literature and History, Sale LN8412 (London, 1998) [auction catalogue].
Title based on contents.
William Henry Davies (1871-1940), poet and writer, was born in Newport, Monmouthshire, the son of Francis Boase Davies and Mary Ann Evans. Following his father's death and his mother's remarriage he and his siblings were adopted by their grandparents. After leaving school he became a picture-frame maker's apprentice. In June 1893 he sailed to America, arriving in New York virtually penniless. He spent the next few years tramping across America, begging and undertaking casual labour, with occasional voyages to Britain working on cattle-ships. He then decided to go to the Klondike but while en route, he lost his right leg after falling under a train in Renfrew, Ontario, on 20 March 1899. After convalescing he returned to Britain. He lived in common lodging houses in London and survived by peddling wares and living off the weekly allowance of ten shillings left to him by his grandmother. He began writing poetry at this time but it was not until 1905 that he succeeded in getting his work published; he managed to save enough money to pay for the printing of two hundred copies of The Soul's Destroyer ([London], [1905]). Several further volumes of poetry and collections appeared between 1905 and 1939. His most famous prose work, Autobiography of a Super-Tramp (London, 1908), was followed by four novels, including The True Traveller (London, 1912) and The Adventures of Johnny Walker, Tramp (London, 1926). Other prose works include Beggars (London, 1909), Nature (London, 1914), My Birds (London, 1933) and My Garden (London, 1933). In 1905 he was befriended by the poet Edward Thomas (1878-1917) and his wife Helen, who in 1907 rented a cottage for him in Sevenoaks, Kent. He returned to London in 1914. Davies married Helen Payne (d. 1979) on 5 February 1923, having met her at a bus stop in London. They lived in East Grinstead, Sussex, before moving back to Sevenoaks, then Oxted, Surrey, and finally to Nailsworth, Gloucestershire, where Davies died on 26 September 1940.
Published
Llyfrgell Genedlaethol Cymru = The National Library of Wales
Papers, 1905-1962, from the collection of E. E. Bissell relating to W. H. Davies, comprising fifty-eight letters and cards, 1905-1938, from Davies to various correspondents including John Gawsworth, Harold Monro and Edward Thomas, with four draft poems by Davies and miscellaneous related papers; together with twenty-one letters, 1951-1962, to Bissell from Richard J. Stonesifer and others concerning Davies.
Arranged according to NLW MSS reference numbers: NLW MSS 23806-23807.
Sotheby's; London; Purchased at auction, lots 305, 309-10, 313; 16 July 1998; B1998/31.
E. E. Bissell (1910-1998) was a collector of books and manuscripts; he had a particular interest in John Cowper Powys, as well as the likes of A. C. Swinburne, Lewis Carroll, Kenneth Grahame and W. H. Davies.
The Sotheby's sale of the library of E. E. Bissell (lots 277-409) included further items relating to W. H. Davies (lots 304-314), mostly first and signed editions of his works and nine autograph and typed poems. These were not purchased by NLW.
Description revised by Rhys Jones.
Readers consulting modern papers in the National Library of Wales are required to abide by the conditions set out in information provided when applying for their Readers' Tickets, whereby the reader shall become responsible for compliance with the Data Protection Act 1998 in relation to any processing by them of personal data obtained from modern records held at the Library.
Usual copyright laws apply. Information regarding ownership of W. H. Davies copyright can be found at http://tyler.hrc.utexas.edu/ (viewed September 2011)
Richard J. Stonesifer, W. H. Davies: A Critical Biography (London, 1963)
Title based on contents.
Preferred citation: NLW MS 23806D.
Edward Thomas (1878-1917), poet and writer, was born Philip Edward Thomas in Lambeth to Welsh-born parents on 3 March 1878. He was educated at St Paul's School, London and Lincoln College, Oxford. Having left St Paul's, Thomas studied for the civil service examination, a move which expressed parental ambition rather than his own as he had reacted against the wordly views of his father, who worked for the Board of Trade and was prominent in Liberal politics. He was encouraged in his early literary ambitions by the critic James Ashcroft Noble and Thomas's first book, The Woodland Life, inspired by his love of the natural world, appeared as early as 1897. Thomas married Noble's daughter Helen (1877-1967) in 1899 and, having graduated from Lincoln College in 1900, made a precarious living as a literary reviewer for the Daily Chronicle whilst also writing essays, anthologies, guidebooks and folk-tales. He also published further books, including The Heart of England (1906), as well as biographical writings, most notably those on Richard Jefferies (1909), Maurice Maeterlinck (1911), Algernon Charles Swinburne (1912) and Walter Pater (1913). This period also produced his autobiographical works The Happy-Go-Lucky Morgans (1913), The Icknield Way (1913) and In Pursuit of Spring (1914). Possibly from an overwhelming feeling that his creativity was shackled and frustrated, Thomas at this time suffered recurrent physical and psychological breakdowns which once took him to the brink of suicide. It was not until 1914 that he wrote his first 'real' poem, entitled 'Up in the Wind'. The wartime collapse of the literary market at last afforded Thomas more time to write poetry; over a space of two years, he was to write over one hundred and forty poems. In 1915 Thomas joined the Artists' Rifles; he was commissioned second lieutenant in 1916 and volunteered for service overseas. In April 1917 he was killed during the first hour of the battle of Arras in northern France and buried the following day on the outskirts of the town; he therefore did not live to see the publication of his Poems (1917) (under his pseudonym Edward Eastaway), nor the subsequent Last Poems (1918) and Collected Poems (1920). His wife Helen wrote of their time together in As It Was (1926) and World Without End (1931). Thomas numbered amongst his poetical and literary influences Robert Frost, Thomas Hardy, W. B. Yeats, D. H. Lawrence, Walter de la Mare, and W. H. Davies.
Published
Some fifty-eight letters and postcards, 1905-1938, from W. H. Davies to various correspondents, mainly concerning his own work and its publication, including some poetry. The letters were collected by E. E. Bissell.
The correspondents include T. I. F. Armstrong (John Gawsworth), 1931-1938 (ff. 1-22), John Freeman, [?early 1914]-1928 (ff. 24-34), Harold Monro, 1905-1927 (ff. 38-39, 41, 45-70), [James Brand] Pinker, 18 December 1905 (f. 72), [M. P.] Shiel, 1 June 1935 (f. 75), [John Collings] Squire, 1914, 1919 (ff. 76-77), and Edward Thomas, 7 December 1907 (f. 78). Also included are carbon copies of letters to Davies from Gawsworth, 19 August 1932 (f. 10), and Monro, 6 October 1920 (f. 44), and from Monro to Conrad Aiken, 20 July 1925 (f. 71); autograph manuscripts, with printers' markings, of Davies' poems 'The Bird of Paradise', [1913] (f. 40), and 'Body and Spirit', [1914] (ff. 42-43), for publication in Poetry and Drama, 1.4 (December 1913), 421, and 2.4 (December 1914), 350, respectively, and 'When Autumn's Fruit', [1920], published in the New Republic, 26 January 1921, p. 251 (f. 80); a signed typescript of Davies' 'In Winter', [October 1931], published by Gawsworth as a limited edition (f. 2); cuttings of 'Come, Melancholy' and 'Age and Youth' from the New Statesman and Nation, 16 January 1932, pp. 47, 65 (ff. 83-84; see also f. 11); proof pages for Davies' contributions to Known Signatures, ed. by John Gawsworth (London, 1932), pp. 31-33, comprising 'Come, Melancholy', 'Age and Youth' and 'In Winter' (ff. 81-82; see also ff. 10-11, 13-16); fragments of an apparently unpublished poem in Davies' hand entitled 'Sally', cut into five strips (f. 23/1-5); 'Bright Flowers', a autograph poem by John Freeman (f. 35); and a signed carte-de-visite photograph of Davies, [early 1900s], apparently presented by him to Edward Thomas.
Arranged alphabetically by correspondent at NLW.
Some folios repaired at NLW with no loss of text.
Lots 309-10, 313, and part of lot 305 at the Sotheby's sale, 16 July 1998.
Title based on contents.
Preferred citation: NLW MS 23807E.
John Wilton (Jack) Haines (1875-1960) was a Gloucester based solicitor, amateur botanist, poet and bibliophile. He was associated with the group of poets living in the vicinity of Dymock, Gloucestershire, during the Edwardian period, becoming a close friend of Edward Thomas and Robert Frost; it was Haines who later coined the phrase 'Dymock Poets' to describe the group. His own poetry was published in John Haines, Poems (London, 1921). He married Alice Dorothy Mary Woodroffe (1881-1956) in 1911 and they had one son John Robert (Robin) Haines (1913-1988), also a solicitor. Jack Haines died on 24 April 1960 in Gloucester.
Published
Twenty-one letters and postcards, 1951-1962, relating mostly to W. H. Davies, sent to E. E. Bissell from various correspondents, notably Davies's biographer Richard J. Stonesifer, 1952-1962 (ff. 26-42).
The other correspondents include Jean Mossop and G. Wren Howard of Jonathan Cape Ltd, 1960-1962, concerning the Stonesifer biography (ff. 1-9), Sir Andrew Duncan, 30 July 1951 (f. 10), John Haines, formerly Davies' solicitor, 1951-1952 (ff. 15-16, 19-21), with transcripts by Bissell (ff. 17-18, 22-23), and Madeline House, 1962 (ff. 24-25); a letter from T. W. Griffiths, Oxford, [2 July 1957] (f. 14), refers to Griffiths' letter in the Sunday Times, 23 June 1957, a cutting of which is f. 43. Also included are draft letters from Bissell to Sir Andrew Duncan's secretary, [14 April 1952] (f. 12), and Richard J. Stonesifer, [1952] (ff. 29-30); a photostat copy, [1952], of the receipt, 1905, for payment for the printing of the first edition of The Soul's Destroyer (London, 1905) (f. 33); and reproductions, [1952], of two photographs of Davies, [1920s], taken at the home of the artist Sir William Nicholson and given to Bissell by Richard Stonesifer (ff. 44-45, see also f. 35).
Arranged in broad alphabetical order by name of correspondent at NLW.
Part of lot 305 at the Sotheby's sale, 16 July 1998.