Biography Arthur Symons

Poet Biography

Born on Feb. 28th, 1865 at Milford Haven, Wales. Arthur Symons was the son of a Wesleyan minister.

English poet and critic, considered a leader of the symbolists in England. In 1884-1886 he edited four of Quaritch's Shakespeare Quarto Facsimiles, and in 1888-1889 seven plays of the "Henry Irving" Shakespeare. He became a member of the staff of the Athenaeum in 1891, and of the Saturday Review in 1894.

His first volume of verse, Days and Nights (1889), consisted of dramatic monologues. His later verse is influenced by a close study of modern French writers, of Baudelaire and especially of Verlaine. He reflects French tendencies both in the subject-matter and style of his poems, in their eroticism and their vividness of description.