Life and career
Drinkwater was born in Leytonstone, Essex (now Greater London), to actor/author Albert Edwin Drinkwater (1851–1923) and Annie Beck (née Brown), and worked as an insurance clerk. In the period immediately before the First World War, he was one of the group of poets associated with the Gloucestershire village of Dymock, along with Rupert Brooke, Lascelles Abercrombie, Wilfrid Wilson Gibson and others. [1]
In 1918, he had his first major success with his play Abraham Lincoln . He followed it with others in a similar vein, including Mary Stuart and Oliver Cromwell.
He had published poetry since The Death of Leander in 1906; the first volume of his Collected Poems was published in 1923. He also compiled anthologies and wrote literary criticism (e.g. Swinburne: an estimate (1913)), and later became manager of Birmingham Repertory Theatre.
He married concert violinist Daisy Kennedy, the ex-wife of Benno Moiseiwitsch, in December 1924. [2] Their daughter, Penny Drinkwater, went on to become a wine writer and member of the circle of wine writers.
Drinkwater made recordings in Columbia Records' International Educational Society Lecture series. They include Lecture 10 – a lecture on The Speaking of Verse (four 78 rpm sides, Cat no. D 40018-40019), and Lecture 70 John Drinkwater reading his own poems (four 78 rpm sides, Cat no. D 40140-40141). [3]
The Dymock poets were a literary group of the early 20th century who made their homes near the village of Dymock in Gloucestershire, in England, near to the border with Herefordshire.
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