Lascelles Abercrombie Biography

Lascelles Abercrombie (also known as the Georgian Laureate, linking him with the "Georgian poets") was a British poet and literary critic, one of the "Dymock poets". He was born in Ashton upon Mersey and educated at the University of Manchester.

Before the First World War, he lived for a time at Dymock in Gloucestershire, part of a community that included Rupert Brooke and Robert Frost. Edward Thomas also visited. In 1922, he was appointed Professor of English at the University of Leeds. In 1929 he moved on to the University of London, and in 1935 to a prestigious readership at Oxford University. He wrote a series of works on the nature of poetry, and several volumes of original verse, that were collected in 'Poems' (1930). In the same year he published separately his most important poem, 'The Sale of Saint Thomas' in six 'Acts'. Non-poetic works of his include The Idea of Great Poetry (1925) and Romanticism (1926).

He was the brother of the architect Patrick Abercrombie. His son was the cell biologist Michael Abercrombie.