John Freeman (poet)

John Frederick Freeman, (29 January 1880 – 23 September 1929), was an English poet and essayist.

Life
Freeman was born in London, and started as an office boy aged 13. He gave up a successful career in insurance to write full time.

From 1907 he was a close friend of Walter de la Mare, who lobbied hard with Edward Marsh to get Freeman into the Georgian Poetry series, with eventual success. De la Mare's biographer Theresa Whistler describes Freeman as "tall, gangling, ugly, solemn, punctilious".

Recognition
He won the Hawthornden Prize in 1920 with Poems 1909-1920. His Last Hours was set to music by Ivor Gurney.

Publications

 * Presage of Victory (1916)
 * Stone Trees (1916)
 * Ancient and Modern Essays in Literary Criticism (1917)
 * Memories of Childhood and other Poems (1919)
 * Poems 1909-1920 (1920)
 * Music (1921)
 * The Grove and Other Poems (1925)
 * Prince Absalom (1925)
 * Collected Poems (1928)
 * Last Poems (1930)