Allen Upward

Born in Worcester on September 20, 1863, George Allen Upward was a British poet, novelist, barrister, politician, and teacher. He studied in Dublin at the Royal University of Ireland, was called to the bar in 1887, and led a notably varied life that crossed literary and public worlds.

Upward wrote poetry, fiction, essays, and plays, and his work reached one of its best-known audiences when poems of his were included in Des Imagistes in 1914, the landmark anthology edited by Ezra Pound. He was also associated with several nationalist causes, especially Irish and Welsh political movements, which reflected the strong political interests that ran alongside his literary career.

His writing was often energetic, unconventional, and intellectually adventurous, and that mix has helped keep him interesting to later readers even if he never became a household name. He died in 1926, leaving behind a body of work that links late Victorian writing with some of the experimental currents of the early twentieth century.