Ebenezer Jones

by George Dance Ebenezer Jones (January 10, 1820- September 14, 1860) was an English poet.

Life
Jones was born in Islington, London, the son of a strict Calvinist father, and educated at "a dull, middle-class school". He had to drop out after his father's death, and became a clerk to a tea merchant. He earned his living as an accountant and by "literary hack work," but spent his spare time reading and writing.

His only published collection of poetry, " Studies of Sensation and Event (1843), "was utterly rejected" by the critics. "“When Jones writes a bad line,” said one, “he writes a bad one with a vengeance. It is hardly possible to say how excruciatingly bad he is.” The "unkind reception" caused him to destroy his manuscripts and attempt to publish no more poetry.

Jones also wrote an excellent short book entitled "The Land Monopoly: The Suffering and Demoralization Caused by It; and the Justice and Expediency of its Abolition", published in 1849. It could reasonably be considered a precursor for Henry George's "Progress and Poverty" (1879), one of the most important books ever on political economy. "The Land Monopoly" delves into themes developed in more detail by Henry George.

He was befriended by Robert Browning and Christina Rossetti. He was married, but his marriage ended in separation. He died of consumption.

Writing
He wrote a good deal of poetry of very unequal merit, but at his best shows a true poetic vein. At least one contemporary literary critic calls him "The Worst Poet in the World." His poem "The Hand" has been cited as an example of bad poetry:

My hand I backward drave As one who seeks a knife; When startlingly did crave To quell that hand’s wild strife Some other hand; all rife With kindness, clasp’d it hard On mine, quick frequent claspings That would not be debarr’d.

To which the Cambridge History of English and American Literature retorts: "But "The Hand" and "The Face" — these are the stock extracts, but it is as silly to neglect as it is degrading to rely on stock matter — have something that is not like other people, and is poetry."

He is best-known for "three remarkable poems" that he wrote shortly before his death: "Winter Hymn to the Snow," "To Death," and "When the World is Burning."

Recognition
Ten years after Jones's death, his poetry was praised by Dante Gabriel Rossetti in Notes and Queries, for its " “vivid disorderly power”. Subsequently, W.B. Scott, Theodore Watts-Dunton, and R.H. Rutherford did the same.

His poem "When the World is Burning" was included in the Oxford Book of English Verse 1250-1900.