The reputation of Edgell Rickword as poet has been overshadowed to some extent by his better-known achievements as critic and editor. It has been limited too, no doubt, by the relative shortness of his poetry-writing career. His first collection appeared in 1921. Ten years later he had all but abandoned poetry. Only a small number of Rickword's verse satires and even fewer of his lyric poems have been published during the past fifty years. And yet Rickword the poet--as much as Rickword the brilliant literary and social critic or Rickword the outstanding editor--has been one of the models of creative intelligence in British culture since the end of World War I.

John Edgell Rickword was born in Colchester, Essex, England, where his father, George Rickword, was the town's first borough librarian. He attended the Royal Grammar School in Colchester and from there went directly into the army in autumn...