John Davidson
John Davidson was a Scottish poet and playwright, born on April 11, 1857, in Barrehead, Renfrewshire. He faced early financial challenges, which interrupted his education and led to a career in teaching, a profession he found unsatisfying. Davidson's literary journey began with the publication of his first poetry collection, "The North Wall," in 1885, coinciding with his marriage to Margaret McArthur. He achieved some recognition with his 1893 work, "Fleet Street Eclogues," which garnered praise from notable contemporaries, including T.S. Eliot.
Despite his early successes, Davidson’s later writings struggled to gain traction, leading to financial difficulties and a sense of isolation. His later verse dramas, part of a series titled "Testaments," reflected his unique philosophical outlook influenced by Darwin and Nietzsche, yet he ultimately rejected aspects of their ideologies. Despite receiving a modest Civil List pension in 1906, Davidson's mental health deteriorated. He relocated to Penzance in 1908 and tragically took his own life on March 23, 1909. Davidson’s remains were buried at sea, in accordance with his wishes, several months after his death.
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John Davidson
Poet
- Born: April 11, 1857
- Birthplace: Barrehead, Renfrewshire, Scotland
- Died: March 23, 1909
- Place of death: Near Penzance, Cornwall, England
Biography
The poet and playwright John Davidson was born on April 11, 1857, in Barrehead, Renfrewshire, Scotland. He was the son of the Reverend Alexander Davidson, a minister of the Evangelical Union; his family’s money ills compelled his father to remove Davidson, at the age of thirteen, from the Highlanders’ Academy at Greenock to go to work. In 1876, Davidson was able to enter Edinburgh University, but only remained for one year.
Becoming a master at various schools, Davidson spent the first part of his adult life as a teacher in Greenock, Glasgow, Perth, Paisley, Crieff, and other places in Scotland, although he disliked teaching and left it in 1884. However, in 1885 he married Margaret McArthur, with whom he had two sons. The financial pressures inherent in family life soon drove him back to teaching. This was also the year of his first poetry collection, The North Wall.
His early attempts at verse drama proved unsuccessful. In 1890 he moved to London and earned a living by journalism and by writing novels and short stories. His third collection of poetry, Fleet Street Eclogues (1893), proved popular and gave him a certain level of literary reputation; it was enjoyed by well known poet T.S. Eliot, who later wrote a preface to a 1961 selection of Davidson’s poems. However, almost nothing Davidson wrote after the mid-1890’s sold well or achieved critical acclaim, and he and his family increasingly sank into poverty.
A series of verse dramas titled “Testaments” followed, published from 1901 to 1908, expressing his idiosyncratic evolutionary theories of life in scientific language. When these met no success, Davidson became isolated and almost monomaniacal. He believed he wrote “a new poetry, for the first time in a thousand years,” and that it was his poetic duty to re-create the unsatisfactory world after his own image. His views of life appeared to have been deeply influenced by Charles Darwin and Friedrich Nietzsche, although he rejected elements of both men’s thought. Although at times Davidson displayed his mastery of the narrative lyrical ballad form, his work varied in quality along with the fortunes of his unhappy life. In 1906, he received a Civil List pension of one hundred pounds per year, but the pension did not appear to lessen his growing melancholy.
Davidson moved his family to Penzance, Cornwall, England, in 1908. Depressed and with symptoms probably of cancer, Davidson committed suicide on March 23, 1909, but his body did not wash up until months later. He was buried at sea on September 21, 1909, according to his wish.