Jenny Joseph
Jenny Joseph was a prominent British poet and writer, born on May 7, 1932, in Birmingham, England. Her early experiences, including being evacuated during World War II, shaped her artistic perspective, and she began writing poetry as a child. She pursued her education at St. Hilda's College, Oxford, where she graduated with honors in 1953 and began publishing her work. Joseph's poem "Warning," written in 1961, gained immense popularity and became a defining piece of her career, even earning accolades in polls as one of the best poems of the twentieth century. This particular poem inspired the creation of numerous Red Hat societies, celebrating older women. Throughout her career, Joseph produced a rich body of work, including children's poetry and dramatic monologues, and received several prestigious awards. She continued to write and publish poetry until the early 21st century, with her last volume, "Nothing Like Love," released in 2009. After a fruitful life dedicated to literature and teaching, Joseph passed away on January 8, 2018, leaving behind a legacy that extends beyond her most famous work. Her contributions to poetry and literature continue to resonate, inviting further exploration and appreciation.
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Subject Terms
Jenny Joseph
- Born: May 7, 1932
- Birthplace: Birmingham, Warwickshire (now in West Midlands), England
- Died: January 8, 2018
- Place of death: England
Biography
Jenny Joseph was born on May 7, 1932, in Birmingham, England, to Louis and Florence Joseph. A child during the World War II years, she was evacuated to the Devon countryside for safety. Her interest in poetry began at an early age. In 1947, she traveled to Switzerland where she studied French before beginning her studies at St. Hilda’s College, Oxford, where she was awarded a scholarship. She published poetry during her Oxford years, graduating with honors in 1953.
After graduation, Joseph worked at various jobs before becoming a reporter for several newspapers. In 1957, she went to South Africa, where she worked as a teacher and a reporter before being expelled from the country. She returned to England, and in 1961 she married Tony Coles. During the 1960s, she gave birth to three children and began her long association teaching for the Workers Education Association.
In 1960, she published her first book of poetry, The Unlooked-for Season. In 1961, Joseph wrote a poem about growing old she called “Warning.” Philip Larkin included the poem in the Oxford Book of Twentieth Century Poetry in 1973. Since that time, the poem has become one of the most popular poems of the twentieth century in England and the United States. In two British Broadcasting Corporation polls, it was voted the best poem of the twentieth century, beating out Dylan Thomas’s “Do Not Go Gentle into That Good Night.” The poem has spawned hundreds of Red Hat societies with older women members. In some ways, the popularity of this poem is unfortunate because it has overshadowed Joseph’s considerable body of poetry written since that time. Joseph followed her first book with six collections of children’s poetry written with Katharine Hoskyns in the 1960s. One of her favorite forms for her poetry is the dramatic monologue, and in these she shows the influence of poet Robert Browning on her work.
She turned to teaching English to nonnative speakers during the 1970s as well as continuing her teaching for the Workers Education Association. She spent a lot of time traveling during the 1970s and 1980s, giving lectures across the United States and Europe. Her first American book, The Inland Sea, was published in 1989. In 1991, she collaborated with photographer Robert Mitchell to produce a beautiful book of writing and photos, Beached Boats. In 1996, Joseph won an Arts Council Traveling Scholarship, allowing her to tour Austria and Eastern Europe. She continued to publish poetry into the twenty-first century, issuing Led by the Nose: A Garden of Smells in 2002. After publishing Extreme of Things (2006), a combination of collected previously published and unpublished poems and new works, she published her final volume, Nothing Like Love, in 2009.
Joseph’s poetry was well received by critics as well as the popular press. In 1960, she won a Gregory Award for Unlooked-for Season, and she won a Chomondeley Award for Rose in the Afternoonin 1974. She also won the James Tait Black Memorial Prize for her novel Persephonein 1986. She was a fellow of the Royal Society of Literature. While Joseph is likely to be remembered best for her poem “Warning,” she was a gifted poet whose complete body of work deserves critical attention.
After a brief illness, Joseph died on January 8, 2018, at the age of eighty-five.
Bibliography
Brownjohn, Alan. "Jenny Joseph Obituary." The Guardian, 19 Jan. 2018, www.theguardian.com/books/2018/jan/19/jenny-joseph-obituary. Accessed 30 Mar. 2018.
"Jenny Joseph." The Times, 13 Jan. 2018, www.thetimes.co.uk/article/obituary-jenny-joseph-vndrprp6x. Accessed 30 Mar. 2018.
"Jenny Joseph: 'I Shall Wear Purple' Poet Dies." BBC News, 16 Jan. 2018, www.bbc.com/news/entertainment-arts-42700952. Accessed 30 Mar. 2018.
"Jenny Joseph, Poet—Obituary." The Telegraph, 26 Jan. 2018, www.telegraph.co.uk/obituaries/2018/01/26/jenny-joseph-poet-obituary/. Accessed 30 Mar. 2018.
Joseph, Jenny. "Jenny Joseph on the Popularity of Her Poem 'Warning.'" Lancet, Nov. 1999, pp. 30–32.