author
John B. (John Banister) Tabb
1845–1909
A Virginia-born poet, priest, and teacher, he became known for short, carefully shaped lyrics that won admirers on both sides of the Atlantic. His life moved through war, captivity, conversion, and years in the classroom, all of which left their mark on his writing.
1 Audiobook
Child Verse: Poems Grave & Gay
by John B. (John Banister) Tabb
About the author
Born in Amelia County, Virginia, in 1845, John Banister Tabb grew up in a prominent family and was educated by private tutors. During the Civil War he served in the Confederate Navy and was later held as a prisoner of war. After the war, a friendship with the poet Sidney Lanier became an important part of his early literary life.
Tabb converted to Catholicism in the 1870s, studied for the priesthood, and was ordained in 1884. He spent much of his career at St. Charles College in Maryland, where he taught English and became widely known as "Father Tabb." Alongside his teaching, he published poems that were often brief, polished, and full of wit, religious feeling, and close observation.
His verse earned lasting attention for its delicacy and compression rather than for grand scale. Though not as widely read now as some of his contemporaries, he was admired in his own time by readers who valued lyrical precision and spiritual depth, and he remains a distinctive voice in American religious and literary history.