Philip James Bailey
Philip James Bailey | |
---|---|
Born | Nottingham, England | 22 April 1816
Died | 6 November 1902 Nottingham, England | (aged 86)
Occupation | Poet |
Notable work | Festus |
Philip James Bailey (22 April 1816 – 6 September 1902) was an English
Life
Bailey was born on 22 April 1816 in
In 1836 Bailey retired to his father's house at Old Basford, near Nottingham, to write. In 1856 he received a
Bailey died of influenza on 6 September 1902. He was buried in Nottingham Rock (aka Church) Cemetery after a service at St Andrew's Church, Nottingham.[3]
Works
Bailey is known almost exclusively by his one voluminous poem, Festus, first published anonymously in 1839, and then expanded with a second edition in 1845. A vast pageant of theology and philosophy, it comprised in some twelve divisions an attempt to represent the relation of God to man, and to postulate "a gospel of faith and reason combined."
Among the admirers of Festus was
The subsequent poems of Bailey, The Angel World (1850), The Mystic (1855), The Age (1858), and The Universal Hymn (1867), were failures. The author then incorporated large extracts of these into the later editions of Festus, which ultimately extended to over 40,000 lines when the final edition was published in 1889. At one time his work was immensely popular, admired for its 'fire of imagination' (Elizabeth Barrett Browning), but, like the other works of the Spasmodic school of which Bailey was considered the father, it is now little read.[6]
In 2021, Edinburgh University Press published a critical edition of Festus, edited by Mischa Willett.[7]
See also
- Panarchy
- Spasmodism
Notes
- ^ a b Lee, Sidney, ed. (1912). . Dictionary of National Biography (2nd supplement). Vol. 1. London: Smith, Elder & Co.
- ^ "Glasgow University Jubilee". The Times. No. 36481. London. 14 June 1901. p. 10. Retrieved 5 January 2024 – via Newspapers.com.
- ^ Club, Manchester Literary (1903). Papers.
- ISBN 978-0-19-923298-7.
- ISBN 978-0-8203-3659-6.
- ^ The Oxford Companion to English Literature, 6th Edition. Edited by Margaret Drabble, Oxford University Press, 2000 Pp59
- ^ "Philip James Bailey, Festus". edinburghuniversitypress.com. Retrieved 27 October 2021.
References
- Chisholm, Hugh, ed. (1911). . Encyclopædia Britannica (11th ed.). Cambridge University Press.
- Cousin, John William (1910), "Bailey, Philip James", A Short Biographical Dictionary of English Literature, London: J. M. Dent & Sons – via Wikisource
External links
- Quotations related to Philip James Bailey at Wikiquote
- Media related to Philip James Bailey at Wikimedia Commons
- Works by Philip James Bailey in eBook form at Standard Ebooks
- Works by or about Philip James Bailey at Internet Archive
- Works by Philip James Bailey at LibriVox (public domain audiobooks)
- Festus poem