Alfred Austin

Alfred Austin was born in Headingley, near Leeds, on 30 May 1835, to a Roman Catholic family. His father, Joseph Austin, was a merchant in Leeds; his mother was a sister of Joseph Locke, the civil engineer and M.P. for Honiton. Austin was educated at Stonyhurst College (Clitheroe, Lancashire), St Mary's College, Oscott,{{cite journal|title=Austin, Alfred |journal=Who's Who|year=1907|volume= 59|pages=66|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=yEcuAAAAYAAJ&pg=PA66}} and University of London, from which he graduated in 1853.{{EB1911|inline=1|wstitle=Austin, Alfred |volume=2 |page=938}} He became a barrister in 1857 but after inheriting a fortune from his uncle gave up his legal career for literature.The Oxford Companion to English Literature, 6th Edition. Edited by Margaret Drabble, Oxford University Press, 2000, p 53

He unsuccessfully stood as a Conservative Party candidate for Taunton in 1865, finishing in fourth place, and at Dewsbury in 1880.{{cite book|last=McKie|first=David|title=McKie's Gazetteer, A Local History of Britain|year=2008|publisher=Atlantic Books|page=19|isbn=978-1-84354-654-2}}Under Ashford, Kent.

Politically conservative, between 1866 and 1896 Austin edited National Review and wrote leading articles for The Standard. He was Foreign Affairs Correspondent with the Standard and served as a special correspondent to the Ecumenical Council of the Vatican in 1870; at the Headquarters of the King of Prussia during the Franco-Prussian War, 1870; at the Congress of Berlin, 1878 where he was granted an audience by German Chancellor Otto von Bismarck. An ardent imperialist and follower of Disraeli he became, in 1883, joint editor of the National Review with W. J. Courthope and was sole editor from 1887 until 1896.

On Tennyson's death in 1892 it was felt that none of the then living poets, except Algernon Charles Swinburne or William Morris, who were outside consideration on other grounds, was of sufficient distinction to succeed to the laurel crown, and for several years no new poet-laureate was nominated. In the interval the claims of one writer and another were assessed,By, for example, the theatre critic Joseph Knight and others in The Idler: see {{cite wikisource |title=Notes by the Way with Memoirs of Joseph Knight, F.S.A. |last=Francis |first=John Collins |wslink=Notes by the Way/Joseph Knight |chapter=Joseph Knight |pages=xxix-xxx |wspages=xxix-xxx |scan=Page:Notes by the Way.djvu/53 |year=1909 |publisher=T. Fisher Unwin |place=London}} but eventually, in 1896, Austin was appointed to the post after Morris had declined it. As a poet Austin never ranked highly in the opinions of his peers and was often derided as being a "Banjo Byron".

The critic Edmund Broadus wrote that the choice of Austin for poet-laureate had much to do with Austin's friendship with Lord Salisbury, his position as an editor and leader writer, and his willingness to use his poetry to support the government.Edmund Kemper Broadus, [https://archive.org/details/laureateshipstud00broauoft The Laureateship, A Study Of The Office Of Poet Laureate In England With Some Account Of The Poets], Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1921, p. 203. For example, shortly before his appointment was announced, Austin published a sonnet entitled "A Vindication of England", written in response to a series of sonnets by William Watson, published in the Westminster Gazette, that had accused Salisbury's government of betraying Armenia and abandoning its people to Turkish massacres.William Watson, [https://archive.org/details/purpleeastseries00watsuoft The Purple East, A Series Of Sonnets On England's Desertion of Armenia], London, 1896, pp. 7-8.

Sir Owen Seaman (1861–1936) gave added currency to the supposed connection with Lord Salisbury in his poem, "To Mr Alfred Austin", In Cap and Bells, London & New York, 1900, 9:

At length a callous Tory chief arose,
Master of caustic jest and cynic gibe,
Looked round the Carlton Club and lightly chose
Its leading scribe.

Austin served as Deputy-Lieutenant for Herefordshire. Austin died of unknown causes at Swinford Old Manor,Photo at {{cite web |title=Swinford Manor, 1901 |url=http://www.francisfrith.com/uk/great-chart/great-chart-swinford-manor-1901_47565 |access-date=1 May 2016}} Hothfield, near Ashford, Kent, England, where he had been ill for some time.{{cite news |newspaper=The New York Times |title=British Laureate, Alfred Austin, dies |date=3 June 1913 |url=https://timesmachine.nytimes.com/timesmachine/1913/06/03/100397329.pdf |access-date=1 May 2016}}

File:George Samuel Elgood00.jpg

On 14 November 1865 Austin married Hester Jane Homan-Mulock, tenth child of Thomas Homan-Mulock and Frances Sophia Berry at St Marylebone Parish Church, London. In his Autobiography, Austin gives a curious account of how they met. Seeing the photograph of a young lady in an album belonging to his friend Isa Blagden in Florence, he had asked: "Who is that?" and received the reply, "The girl you ought to marry, if you can." Austin brought home a letter of introduction, the presentation of which led to his receiving at his cottage in Hertfordshire Hester (the young lady in the photograph), her sister and their chaperon, together with their friend Thomas Adolphus Trollope, brother of Anthony Trollope. At a second visit Hester became engaged to Alfred.Alfred Austin, Autobiography (London: Macmillan and Co., 1911), Vol. I, pp. 194–196. See also The Poet's Diary (London: Macmillan and Co., 1904), pp. 194–196. Throughout his career as journalist and writer Austin derived constant help and support from his wife. She died suddenly on 23 September 1929 at her residence in Kensington. His nephews included the Polar Explorer Captain George Mulock and British diplomat Sir Howard William Kennard (1878–1955), British Ambassador to Poland at the outbreak of the Second World War.

In 1861, after two false starts in poetry and fiction, he made his first noteworthy appearance as a writer with The Season: a Satire, which contained incisive lines, and was marked by some promise both in wit and observation. In 1870 he published a volume of criticism, The Poetry of the Period, which was conceived in the spirit of satire, and attacked Tennyson, Browning, Matthew Arnold and Swinburne in an unrestrained fashion. The book aroused some discussion at the time, but its lack of balance meant that its judgments were extremely uncritical. Austin wrote of the "detestable gibberish" of Robert Browning, of Swinburne's "emasculated poetic voice," and of William Morris as "the idle singer of an empty day," and he prophesied that Tennyson's In Memoriam "will assuredly be handed over to the dust when a generation arises that has come to its senses." Austin himself, while he continued to "think that there was a strong element of truth in The Poetry of the Period," soon came to deem "the tone in which it was written unfortunate," and in 1873, three years after its publication, he withdrew it from circulation.Alfred Austin, Autobiography (London: Macmillan and Co., 1911), Vol. II, p. 219

A contemporary critic, Walter Whyte, praised the "purity" of Austin's style: "He writes sound unaffected English; his meaning is always transparent. He has not sought to emulate Tennyson's exquisite elaboration of diction; his lines are seldom jewelled by 'curious felicities.' But they are always graceful, and sometimes admirably vigorous and hearty.[...] One of the charms of his poetry lies in the freshness and vividness of his descriptions of Nature. He has dealt powerfully with the grandeurs of Alpine scenery, but his happiest pictures are of English fields and woods."Walter Whyte, "Alfred Austin", in Alfred H. Miles (ed.), The Poets and the Poetry of the Century, Vol. 6: William Morris to Robert Buchanan (London: Hutchinson & Co., 1891), pp. 148–149

The critic George Saintsbury, while endorsing the general view that "Alfred Austin hardly deserved to be made poet laureate," found him "a really vigorous and accomplished writer of prose, and a tolerable master of unambitious form in verse." Austin, he wrote, "could keep up poems of some length like Prince Lucifer and The Human Tragedy," and approach a modicum of "vigour and passion in lyric."The Cambridge History of English and American Literature (Cambridge University Press, 1907–1921), Vol. XIII: English. The Victorian Age, Part 1, (ed. A. W. Ward and A. R. Waller), Ch. VI. Lesser Poets of the Middle and Later Nineteenth Century (by George Saintsbury), [https://www.bartleby.com/223/0647.html §47. Alfred Austin]

As poet-laureate, his topical verses did not escape negative criticism; a hasty poem written in praise of the Jameson Raid in 1896 being a notable instance. A drama by him, Flodden Field, was performed at His Majesty's theatre in 1903, with incidental music by Percy Pitt. A number of his poems were set to music by Frances Allitsen,{{cite web |work=The LiederNet Archive |title=Alfred Austin (1835-1913) |url=http://www.lieder.net/lieder/get_author_texts.html?AuthorId=15033 |access-date=1 May 2016}} and Alexander Mackenzie's contribution to [http://www.musicweb-international.com/classrev/2009/June09/Victoria_TOCC0012.htm Choral Songs in Honour of Her Majesty Queen Victoria] (1899) was a setting of Austin's occasional poem "With wisdom, goodness, grace".

File:Alfred Austin Vanity Fair 20 February 1896.jpg for Vanity Fair, 1896]]

Novels

• (1858). Five Years of It. London: J. F. Hope (2 vols) [http://www.forgottenbooks.com/books/Five_Years_of_It_v1_1000567077 Volume 1] · [http://www.forgottenbooks.com/books/Five_Years_of_It_v3_1000571294 Volume 2]
• (1864). An Artist's Proof, London: Tinsley (3 vols) [https://archive.org/details/anartistsproof00austgoog Volume 1] · [https://archive.org/details/anartistsproof01austgoog Volume 2] · [https://archive.org/details/anartistsproof02austgoog Volume 3]
• (1866). Won by a Head. London: Chapman & Hall (3 vols) [https://archive.org/details/wonbyaheadanove01austgoog Volume 1] · [https://archive.org/details/wonbyaheadanove02austgoog Volume 2] · [https://archive.org/details/wonbyaheadanove03austgoog Volume 3]

Poetry

• (1855). Randolph: A Poem in Two Cantos. London: Saunders & Otley. Revised edition published as [https://archive.org/details/leszkobastardat00austgoog Leszko the Bastard: A Tale of Polish Grief] (1877), London: Chapman & Hall
• (1856). [https://www.poemhunter.com/best-poems/alfred-austin/grandmother-s-teaching/ Grandmother's Teaching] Littell's Living Age [https://en.wikisource.org/wiki/Author:Alfred_Austin cited]
• (1861). [https://archive.org/details/seasonasatire05austgoog The Season: A Satire], London: Hardwicke. Revised edition (1861), London: George Manwaring; new revised edition (1869), London: Hotten
• (1861). [https://archive.org/details/mysatireanditsc01austgoog My Satire and its Censors]. London: George Manwaring
• (1862). [https://archive.org/details/humantragedy00austgoog The Human Tragedy: A Poem], London: Hardwicke. Revised edition (1876), Edinburgh: Blackwood; new revised edition (1889), London: Macmillan
• (1871). [https://archive.org/details/goldenageasatir00austgoog The Golden Age: A Satire]. London: Chapman & Hall.
• (1872). [https://archive.org/details/interludes00aust Interludes]. Edinburgh and London: Blackwood
• (1873). [https://archive.org/details/romeordeath01austgoog Rome or Death!]. Edinburgh and London: Blackwood
• (1882). [https://archive.org/details/soliloquiesinso01austgoog Soliloquies in Song]. London: Macmillan
• (1885). [https://archive.org/details/atgateconventan00austgoog At the Gate of the Convent and Other Poems]. London: Macmillan
• (1889). [https://archive.org/details/loveswidowhooda01austgoog Love's Widowhood and Other Poems]. London: Macmillan
• (1891). [https://archive.org/details/lyricalpoems01austgoog Lyrical Poems]. London & New York: Macmillan
• (1891). [https://archive.org/details/narrativepoems03austgoog Narrative Poems]. London & New York: Macmillan. [https://archive.org/details/narrativepoems01austgoog 2nd edition (1896)]
• (1895). [https://archive.org/details/madonnaschild00austgoog Madonna's Child ]. London: Macmillan
• (1897). [https://archive.org/details/conversionofwinc00aust The Conversion of Winckelmann and Other Poems]. London: Macmillan
• (1900). [https://archive.org/details/songsengland00austgoog Songs of England]. London: Macmillan
• (1902). [https://archive.org/details/ataletruelovean02austgoog A Tale of True Love and Other Poems]. London: Macmillan, New York: Harper
• (1906). [https://archive.org/details/doorhumility01austgoog The Door of Humility]. London: Macmillan
• (1908). [https://archive.org/details/sacredandprofan00austgoog Sacred and Profane Love and Other Poems]. London: Macmillan

Drama

• (1874). [https://archive.org/details/towerbabelapoet01austgoog The Tower of Babel: A Poetical Drama]. Edinburgh: Blackwood
• (1881). [https://archive.org/details/savonarolaatrag00austgoog Savonarola: A Tragedy]. London: Macmillan
• (1887). [https://archive.org/details/princelucifer00austgoog Prince Lucifer]. London: Macmillan; 3rd edition (1891).
• (1892). [https://archive.org/details/fortunatuspessim00aust Fortunatus the Pessimist: A Dramatic Poem] London & New York: Macmillan
• (1896). [https://archive.org/details/englandsdarling01austgoog England's Darling] London & New York: Macmillan. Republished as Alfred the Great: England's Darling (1901). London: Macmillan .
• (1903). [https://archive.org/details/floddenfieldatr00unkngoog Flodden Field: A Tragedy]. London: Macmillan
• (1904). [https://archive.org/details/alessoninharmon00austgoog A Lesson in Harmony]. London and New York: Samuel French

Other

• (1869). [https://archive.org/details/avindicationlor00austgoog A Vindication of Lord Byron]. London: Chapman & Hall
• (1870). [https://archive.org/details/poetryofperiod00austuoft The Poetry of the Period]. London: Richard Bentley
• (1885). [https://archive.org/details/skeletonsatfeas00austgoog Skeletons at the Feast. Or, The Radical Programme]. London: W. H. Allen
• (1894). [https://archive.org/details/gardenthatilove01austgoog The Garden that I Love]. London & New York: Macmillan
• (1895). [https://archive.org/details/inveronicasgard00austgoog In Veronica's Garden]. London & New York: Macmillan
• (1898). [https://archive.org/details/lamiaswinterqua00austgoog Lamia's Winter-Quarters]. London: Macmillan
• (1902). [https://archive.org/details/hauntsancientpe00austgoog Haunts of Ancient Peace]. London & New York: Macmillan; London: A. & C. Black
• (1904). [https://archive.org/details/poetsdiary00austgoog The Poet's Diary]. London: Macmillan
• (1904). [https://archive.org/details/aneighteenthcent00austuoft An Eighteenth Century Anthology]. London: Blackie
• (1907). [https://archive.org/details/gardenthatiloves00austiala The Garden That I Love: Second Series]. London: Macmillan
• (1910). [https://archive.org/details/bridlingofpegasu00austuoft The Bridling of Pegasus: Prose Papers on Poetry]. London: Macmillan
• (1911). The Autobiography of Alfred Austin, Poet Laureate, 1835–1910. London: Macmillan (2 vols) - [https://archive.org/details/autobiographyofa01aust Volume 1] · [https://archive.org/details/autobiographyofa02aust Volume 2]

Austin was the subject of a Vanity Fair cartoon by Spy published on 20 February 1896.

He was caricatured as "Sir Austed Alfrin" by L. Frank Baum in his 1906 novel John Dough and the Cherub.

Van Morrison's song "Haunts of Ancient Peace", the first track on his 1980 album Common One, took its title from Austin's 1902 book of the same name.Peter Mills, Hymns to the Silence: Inside the Words and Music of Van Morrison (New York: Continuum, 2010), p. 338.

{{Reflist|refs=

{{cite Men-at-the-Bar|name=Austin, Alfred|page=15}}

}}

• The Autobiography of Alfred Austin, Poet Laureate, 1835 – 1910; ({{ISBN|0-404-08717-5}})
• The Story of Mulock: The Pedigree of the Mulock Family of Ireland by Sir Edmund Thomas Bewley (Ponsonby & Gibbs, 1905)
• By Virtue & Faith: A History of the Mulock & Mullock Families by Robert Hughes-Mullock FRAS (2012)

{{Commons category|Alfred Austin}}

{{wikiquote}}

{{wikisource author}}

• {{gutenberg author|id=37643|name=Alfred Austin}}
• {{Internet Archive author |sname=Alfred Austin}}
• {{Librivox author|id=8143}}
• {{UK National Archives ID}}
• [http://www.oac.cdlib.org/findaid/ark:/13030/tf600004sq Alfred Austin Papers, 1869–1902] (5 linear ft.) housed in the [https://web.archive.org/web/20080604212605/http://library.stanford.edu/depts/spc/spc.html Department of Special Collections and University Archives] at [http://library.stanford.edu Stanford University Libraries]
• Mulock Family Tree {{Cite web|title=The Irish Bomfords 1617 to the Present|url=http://www.bomford.net/IrishBomfords/Chapters/Chapter15/mulock_tree.htm|access-date=8 December 2010}}
• Alfred Austin Collection. General Collection, Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library, Yale University.

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{{s-bef|before=Alfred, Lord Tennyson}}

{{s-ttl|title=British Poet Laureate|years=1892–1913}}

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{{Poets Laureate of the United Kingdom}}

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{{DEFAULTSORT:Austin, Alfred}}

Category:1835 births

Category:1913 deaths

Category:Alumni of the University of London

Category:British poets laureate

Category:English Roman Catholics

Category:People educated at Stonyhurst College

Category:People from the Borough of Ashford

Category:People from Headingley

Category:Victorian novelists

Category:Victorian poets

Category:19th-century English writers

Category:19th-century English novelists

Category:20th-century English poets

Category:Conservative Party (UK) parliamentary candidates

Category:Writers from Leeds