George Barlow (poet)

George Barlow (19 June 1847, London^[1] – 1913 or 1914^[2]) was an English poet, who sometimes wrote under the pseudonym James Hinton.

Barlow was the son of George Barnes Barlow, Master of the Crown Office,^[3] and was educated at Harrow School and Exeter College, Oxford.^[4] He moved to London in 1871, and continued to live there after his marriage a year later.^[2] A prolific poet, his collected Poetical Works amounted to over 3,000 pages of verse. Barlow was dubbed the 'Bard of the sixteen sonnets a day' by his acquaintance Charles Marston, and 'the Poet of spiritualism' by Edward Bennett; his sonnet sequences explored spiritualism and erotic love.^[5]

In addition to his published poetry oeuvre, Barlow wrote at least two non-fiction books, History of the Dreyfus case (1898) and The genius of Dickens. He was a regular contributor to the Contemporary Review.

Works

• A life's love, [1873]. New edition, 1882
• (as James Hinton), An English madonna, 1874
• Under the dawn, 1875
• The gospel of humanity: or the connection between spiritualism and modern thought, 1876
• The marriage before death, and other poems, 1878
• The two marriages, a drama in three acts, 1878
• Through death to life, 1878
• To Gertrude in the Spirit World, 1878
• Love-songs, 1880
• Time's whisperings: sonnets and songs, 1880
• Song-bloom, 1881
• Song-spray, 1882
• An actor's reminiscences, and other poems, 1883
• (as James Hinton), Love's offering, 1883
• Poems real and ideal, 1884
• Loved beyond worlds, 1885
• The pageant of life: an epic poem in five books, 1888. New edition, 1910
• From dawn to sunset, 1890
• A lost mother, 1892
• The crucifixion of man: a narrative poem, 1893. Second edition, 1895
• Jesus of Nazareth, a tragedy, [1896]
• Woman regained. A novel of artistic life, 1896
• The daughters of Minerva. A novel of artistic life, [1898]
• A history of the Dreyfus case : from the arrest of Captain Dreyfus in October, 1894, up to the flight of Esterhazy in September, 1898, 1899
• To the women of England, and other poems, 1901
• The Poetical Works of George Barlow, London: Henry Glaisher, 11 vols, 1902–14
• A coronation poem, 1902
• Vox clamantis: sonnets and poems, 1904
• The higher love. A plea for a noble conception of human love, 1905. Reprinted from the Contemporary Review.
• The triumph of woman, prose essays, 1907
• A man's vengeance, and other poems, 1908
• The genius of Dickens, 1909. Reprinted from the Contemporary Review.
• Songs of England awaking, 1909. Second edition, 1910
• Selected poems, 1921. With note by C. W., bibliography and short life.

References

1. Wheeler, J. M., A biographical dictionary of freethinkers, 1889
2. 'Mr. George Barlow', The Times, 3 Jan. 1914, p. 11
3. Miles, Alfred Henry, The Poets and the Poetry of the Nineteenth Century, 1906, p. 267; Eyles, F. A. H., Popular Poets of the Period, 1889, p. 204
4. Kirk, J. F., A supplement to Allibone's critical dictionary of English literature, 2 vols, 1891
5. John Holmes, Dante Gabriel Rossetti and the late Victorian Sonnet-Sequence: Sexuality, Belief and the Self, p. 39, 78. Holmes, pp. 77-83, gives extended attention to To Gertrude in the Spirit World

External links

• Works by or about George Barlow in libraries (WorldCat catalog)