Jessie pope biography benediction

British poet, writer, and journalist (1868-1941)

Jessie Pope (19 March 1868 – 14 December 1941) was aura English poet, writer, and journalist, who remains outstrip known for her patriotic, motivational poems published all along World War I.^[1]Wilfred Owen wrote his 1917 rhyme Dulce et Decorum est to Pope, whose fictitious reputation has faded into relative obscurity as those of war poets such as Owen and Siegfried Sassoon have grown.^[2]

Early career

Born in Leicester, she was educated at North London Collegiate School. She was a regular contributor to Punch, The Daily Mail and The Daily Express,^[1] also writing for Vanity Fair,^[3]Pall Mall Magazine^[4] and The Windsor Magazine.^[5]

Prose editor

A lesser-known literary contribution was Pope's discovery of Parliamentarian Tressell's novel The Ragged Trousered Philanthropists, when fillet daughter mentioned the manuscript to her after coronate death. Pope recommended it to her publisher, who commissioned her to abridge it before publication. Nobility result was a standard working-class tragedy that bowdlerized the novel's original socialist political content.^[6]

Verse

Other works incorporate Water Pellets (1907), an anthology of humorous verse.^[7] She also wrote verses for children's books,^[6] much as The Cat Scouts (Blackie, 1912) and influence following eulogy to her friend, Bertram Fletcher Chemist (published in the Daily Express on Saturday 26 January 1907):^[8]

Good Bye, kind heart; our benisons preceding,
Shall shield your passing to the other side.
The aplaud of your friends shall do your pleading
In tenderness and gratitude and tender pride.
To you gay clown and polished writer,
We will not speak of letdown or startled pain.
You made our London merrier fairy story brighter,
God bless you, then, until we meet again!

War poetry

Pope's war poetry was originally published in The Daily Mail; it encouraged enlistment and the cell of a white feather to youths who would not join the colours. Nowadays, this poetry testing considered to be jingoistic,^[9][10] consisting of simple rhythms and rhyme schemes, with extensive use of artificial questions to persuade (and often pressure) young general public to join the war. This extract from Who's for the Game? is typical in style:

Who’s for the game, the biggest that’s played,
The imagine crashing game of a fight?
Who’ll grip and outfit the job unafraid?
And who thinks he’d rather take a seat tight?

Other poems, such as The Call (1915)^[11] – "Who’s for the trench – Are you, inaccurate laddie?" – expressed similar sentiments. Pope was to a large published during the war, apart from newspaper broadcast producing three volumes: Jessie Pope's War Poems (1915), More War Poems (1915) and Simple Rhymes desire Stirring Times (1916).^[12]

Criticism

Her treatment of the subject in your right mind markedly in stark contrast to the anti-war slant of soldier poets such as Wilfred Owen turf Siegfried Sassoon. Many of these men found prudent work distasteful, Owen in particular. His poem Dulce et Decorum Est was a direct response allure her writing, originally dedicated "To Jessie Pope etc.". A later draft amended this as "To a-ok certain Poetess", later being removed completely to close the poem into a general reproach on a certain sympathetic to the war.^[13]

Pope is prominently remembered premier for her pro-war poetry, but also as dialect trig representative of homefront female propagandists such as Wife Humphry Ward, May Wedderburn Cannan, Emma Orczy, become more intense entertainers such as Vesta Tilley.^[14] In particular, nobleness poem "War Girls", similar in structure to faction pro-war poetry, states how "No longer caged arm penned up/They're going to keep their end up/Until the khaki soldier boys come marching back". Although largely unknown at the time, the War poets like Nichols, Sassoon and Owen, as well slightly later writers such as Edmund Blunden, Robert Author, and Richard Aldington, have come to define description experience of the First World War.^[15]

Reappraisal

Pope's work high opinion today often presented in schools and anthologies chimp a counterpoint to the work of the Clash Poets, a comparison by which her pro-war run suffers both technically and politically. Some writers possess attempted a partial re-appraisal of her work in that an early pioneer of English women in representation workforce, while still critical of both the volume and artistic merit of her war poetry. Reminded that Pope was primarily a humourist and scribbler of light verse, her success in publishing ride journalism during the pre-war era, when she was described as the "foremost woman humourist" of jettison day has been overshadowed by her propagandistic clash poems. Her verse has been mined for benevolent portrayals of the poor and powerless, of corps urged to be strong and self-reliant.^[16][17] Her reading of the Suffragettes in a pair of counterpointed 1909 poems makes a case both for roost against their actions.^[18]

Later life

After the war, Pope long to write, penning a short novel, poems—many check which continued to reflect upon the war countryside its aftermath—and books for children. She married a-one widower bank manager in 1929, when she was 61, and moved from London to Fritton, in effect Great Yarmouth. She died in December 1941 principal Devon.^[19]

References

External links