Although today his criticism is more likely to be read than his poetry, Lascelles Abercrombie was regarded as one of the leading poets of the Georgian group that dominated English poetry during the second decade of the twentieth century. Abercrombie represents Georgian tendencies in his exultant celebration of life's energy, his occasionally brutal realism, his adoption of colloquial diction, and his interest in dramatic form, but in his uncompromising determination to pursue metaphysical speculation in his verse, Abercrombie stands alone.

Born at Ashton-on-Mersey, Cheshire, the eighth of nine children of William Abercrombie, a stockbroker, and Sarah Ann Heron Abercrombie, the young Lascelles (the name rhymes with tassels) grew up in a home that was sufficiently wealthy and sufficiently aware to be in touch with the most fashionable trends in the arts. Listening to his father read Henley in a drawing room furnished with Morris hangings and Rossetti watercolors...