SOURCE: "Who Was Rupert Brooke?" in Critical Survey, Vol. 2, No. 2, 1990, pp. 185-93.

In the following essay, Stallworthy challenges the prevailing impression of Brooke as a tormented poet.

This may seem an odd question to ask on a poet's hundredth birthday, but it was one asked by his oldest friend forty years after his death. Geoffrey Keynes, having selected and edited his letters, had just sent a set of proofs to each of his fellow literary trustees and to a few of Brooke's other friends. To his consternation, several responded with horror, saying in effect: 'The letters to me show the real Rupert, but his posturing in the others distorts the portrait out of all recognition.' In vain did Keynes point out that they each regarded the letters to him or to her (Frances Cornford was one of those most troubled) as expressing the real Rupert and shook...