John Masefield rose to prominence during the first two decades of the twentieth century as the author of Salt-Water Ballads (1902) and of several popular narrative poems including The Everlasting Mercy (1911) and The Widow in the Bye Street (1912). He was also the author of more than twenty volumes of fiction, which included novels, books for children, and collections of short stories; of several historical books which included Sea Life in Nelson's Time (1905); and of seventeen plays in prose and verse. During his poet laureateship from 1930 to 1967 he used his opportunity as a world-famous figure to carry those concerns expressed in his earlier work to an enlarged public audience: the suffering of the poor and exploited, respect for the common man, the preference for the simple rural life as contrasted with urban life, the hatred of excessive commercialism and industrialism fostered in our ugly cities, and the necessity for the...