Owen Seaman

Sir Owen Seaman, 1st Baronet (18 September 1861 – 2 February 1936) was a British writer, journalist and poet. He is best known as editor of

Punch

, from 1906 to 1932.

Biography

Born in

Durham College of Science, Newcastle upon Tyne (1890–1903), and became a barrister of the Inner Temple in 1897.^[3]

Seaman's first successful submission to the satirical and humorous magazine Punch was "Rhyme of the Kipperling", an 1894 parody of Rudyard Kipling. The same year he published a full volume of parodies entitled Horace at Cambridge.^[4] After several years of submitting work which showed "a remarkable gift for the composition of light verse,"^[3] he was invited to join the staff in 1897, becoming assistant editor in 1902 and finally editor in 1906. It was during his tenure there that A. A. Milne, author of the Winnie-the-Pooh stories, worked as his assistant; it is thought that Seaman's dour disposition may have been the inspiration behind the gloomy character of Eeyore.^[4]

In 1914 he was

anthologist John M. Munro put it.^[5] In 1915, he published War Time, a book of poetry that Munro described as "a mixture of satiric verse and patriotic doggerel." Nevertheless, in 1933, he was created a baronet, of Bouverie Street in the City of London. Sir Owen never married, and died in 1936. He is buried in Putney Vale Cemetery

; his epitaph reads "He sleeps, immortal by the spirit – Balm of universal love."

References

^ "Seaman, Owen (SMN880O)". A Cambridge Alumni Database. University of Cambridge.
^ A History of Magdalen College School Oxford, Second Edition, Blackwells, 1958, p. 168
^ ^a ^b "Seaman, Sir Owen". River Campus Libraries: A – Z List of the Manuscript Collections. University of Rochester. 18 July 2005. Retrieved 29 June 2006.
^ ^a ^b Myers, Alan (2004). "Owen Seaman". Myers Literary Guide to North-East England. Northumbria University Centre for Northern Studies. Archived from the original on 17 March 2004. Retrieved 29 June 2006.
^ Munro, John Murchison, ed. (1968). English Poetry in Transition: 1880–1920. Pegasus. ASIN B0006D7Z2W. {{cite book}}: |first= has generic name (help)CS1 maint: multiple names: authors list (link) qtd. in Rusche, Harry (n.d.). "Owen Seaman". Lost Poets of the Great War. Atlanta, GA: Emory University. Retrieved 29 June 2006.