Stephen Phillips

Born in Somertown, Oxford, in 1864, Stephen Phillips became known as an English poet and playwright whose work found a large audience at the end of the nineteenth century. After spending time with a touring theatrical company, he turned more fully to writing and rose quickly with books of poems that helped establish his name.

He was especially admired for a lush, elevated style and for dramatic works inspired by myth, history, and tragedy. Plays such as Paolo and Francesca, Herod, and Ulysses were among the works that made him popular on the British stage and in literary circles during his lifetime.

Phillips died in 1915. Though he is not as widely read now as some of his contemporaries, he remains an interesting figure from the late Victorian and Edwardian period: a writer whose career shows how closely poetry and theater could still overlap in that era.