John Masefield 1878–1967

Abstract

John Edward Masefield was born in Herefordshire and trained while still a boy, after school in Warwick, for the Merchant Navy. After a very brief period at sea he became, for a time, a tramp and odd-job man in the United States. On his return to England he began his career, with Salt Water Ballads (1902), as a prolific and very successful poet, novelist and playwright. He was also one of the century’s most gifted writers of stories for children (notably The Midnight Folk, 1927). He became Poet Laureate in 1930 and received the Order of Merit in 1935.