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Ralph Hodgson

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Ralph hodgson

Ralph Hodgson (1871-1962). Courtesy Poets' Corner.

Ralph Hodgson (9 September 1871 - 3 November 1962), Order of the Rising Sun (Japanese 旭日章),was an English poet, very popular in his lifetime on the strength of a small number of anthology pieces, such as 'The Bull'. He was one of the more 'pastoral' of the Georgian poets.

Life[]

Youth[]

Hodgson was born in Darlington, Yorkshire. It is said that his father was a coal merchant, and that he ran away from home while at school.

From about 1890 he worked for a number of London publications. He was a comic artist, signing himself 'Yorick', and became art editor on C.B. Fry's Weekly Magazine of Sports and Out-of-Door Life. His 1st poetry collection, The Last Blackbird and other lines, appeared in 1907.

Poet and publisher[]

In 1912 he founded a small press, At the Sign of the Flying Fame, with the illustrator Claud Lovat Fraser (1890–1921) and the writer and journalist Holbrook Jackson (1874–1948). It published his collection The Mystery (1913). The press became inactive in 1914 as World War I broke out, and Hodgson and Lovat joined the armed forces. Hodgson was in the Royal Navy and then the British Army. His reputation was established by Poems (1917).

In Japan[]

His 1st wife Janet (née Chatteris) died in 1920. He then married Muriel Fraser (divorced 1932). Shortly after that he accepted an invitation to teach English at Tohoku University in Sendai, Japan. In 1933 he married Lydia Aurelia Bolliger, an American missionary and teacher there. While in Japan Hodgson worked, almost anonymously, as part of the committee that translated the great collection of Japanese classical poetry, the Man'yōshū, into English. The high quality of the published translations is almost certainly the result of his "final revision" of the texts. This could arguably be considered Hodgson's major accomplishment as a poet.

Retirement in the U.S.A.[]

In 1938 Hodgson left Japan, visited friends in the U.K. including Siegfried Sassoon (they had met 1919) and then settled permanently with Aurelia in Minerva, Ohio. He was involved there in publishing, under the Flying Scroll imprint, and some academic contacts.

He was averse to publicity. This has led to claims that he was reticent. Far from that being the case, his friend Walter de la Mare found him an almost exhausting talker; but he made a point of personal privacy. He kept up a copious correspondence with other poets and literary figures, including those he met in his time in Japan such as Takeshi Saito.

He died in Minerva.

Quotations[]

"Some things have to be believed to be seen."
"The handwriting on the wall may be a forgery."
"Time, you old gypsy man, will you not stay, put up your caravan just for one day?"
"Did anyone ever have a boring dream?"

Recognition[]

Hodgson received the Edmond de Polignac Prize in 1914, for a musical setting of The Song of Honour

He was included in the Georgian Poetry anthologies.

He was awarded the Order of the Rising Sun by the Emperor of Japan in 1938 for his work on the Man'yōshū,

In 1954, he was awarded the Queen's Gold Medal for Poetry.

In popular culture[]

Arthur Bliss set some of his poems to music.

Publications[]

Poetry[]

  • The Last Blackbird, and other lines. London: George Allen, 1907.
  • The Song of Honour (illustrated by Claud Lovat Fraser). London: Flying Fame, 1913.
  • The Mystery, and other poems (illustrated by Claud Lovat Fraser). London: Printed by A.T. Stevens for Flying Fame, 1913.
  • Eve, and other poems (illustrated by Claud Lovat Fraser). London: Flying Fame, 1913.
  • The Bull (illustrated by Claud Lovat Fraser). London: Flying Fame, 1913.
  • Poems. London & New York: Macmillan, 1917.
  • Silver Wedding, and other poems. Minerva, OH: Boerner, 1941.
  • The Muse and the Mastiff. Minerva, OH: Boerner, 1942.
  • The Skylark, and other poems. London: Macmillan / New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1958.
  • Songs to Our Surnames. Cerne Abbas, Dorset, UK: George Tee, 1960.
  • Affirmation. Minerva, OH: Boerner, 1961.
  • Collected Poems. London: Macmillan / New York: St. Martin's Press, 1961.

Translated[]

  • The Manyoshu: The Nippon Gakujutsu Shinkokai translation of one thousand poems (translated with the Japanese Classics Translation Committee). New York & London: Columbia University Press, 1969.


Except where noted, bibliographical information courtesy WorldCat.[1]

See also[]

References[]

  • John Harding, Dreaming of Babylon: The life and times of Ralph Hodgson. London: Greenwich Exchange, 2008.

Notes[]

  1. ↑ Search results=Ralph Hodgson 1871-1962, WorldCat, Web, Sep. 25, 2014.

External links[]

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