Robert Laurence Binyon was renowned for a variety of literary activities, as poet, dramatist, translator, critic, and art historian. He was active throughout his life in spreading an appreciation for both art and letters.

Born at Lancaster, England, on 10 August 1869, Robert Laurence Binyon was the second son of a clergyman, the Reverend Frederick Binyon, and his wife, Mary, whose father, Robert Benson Dockray, was the resident engineer of the London and Birmingham Railroad. Binyon was educated at St. Paul's School and Trinity College, Oxford, where he was awarded the Newdigate Prize for a poem called "Persephone," took a first-class degree in classical moderations (1890) and a second-class degree in litterae humaniores (1892). While he was at Oxford four of his poems were published in a small volume called Primavera: Poems by Four Authors (1890), which also included verses by his cousin Stephen Phillips, who achieved some renown as a poet.

As...