Norman Rowland Gale (4 March 1862 – 7 October 1942) was a poet, novelist and reviewer, who published many books over a period of nearly fifty years.
Gale was born in Kew, Surrey. He entered Exeter College, Oxford in 1880 and graduated in 1884.Michael Seeney, A Six Foot Three Nightingale: Norman Gale, 1862–1942: A Biographical Essay and Check-List (Oxford: Rivendale Press, 1998), p. 3 He was a teacher for some years, but in 1892 he began writing full-time.Louis Untermeyer (ed.), Modern British Poetry: A Critical Introduction, 3rd revised edition (New York: Harcourt, Brace and Company, 1930), p. 278 His poems "Betrothed" and "The Call" appeared in The Yellow Book."Betrothed", The Yellow Book, Volume 2 (July 1894), p. 227"The Call", The Yellow Book, Volume 5 (April 1895), pp. 280–282 His best-known poem is probably "The Country Faith","The Country Faith" at bartleby.com which is in The Oxford Book of English Verse. In the United States, Louis Untermeyer included it in his anthology Modern British Poetry, and, with a change of title to "Life in the Country", it opened the second reader in Cora Wilson Stewart's series, Country Life Readers.Jane Greer, "Literacy, Learning and Letters: Cora Wilson Stewart's Moonlight Schools, 1911–1930", Midwest Modern Language Association (2000)
For the last two years of his life Gale lived in Headley Down, Hampshire, where he died at the age of eighty.Hampshire Telegraph and Post (23 October 1942), p. 8
Publications A Country Muse, 1892; reprinted with additions as A Country Muse: First Series, 1894 A Country Muse: New Series, 1893; reprinted with additions as A Country Muse: Second Series, 1895 Orchard Songs, A June Romance [novel], 1894 Cricket Songs, 1894 All Expenses Paid, 1895 Songs for Little People, 1896 (ed.) Poems by John Clare, 1901 Barty's Star [novel], 1903 More Cricket Songs, 1905 A Book of Quatrains, 1909 Song in September, 1912 Solitude, 1913 Collected Poems, 1914 The Candid Cuckoo, 1918 A Merry-go-Round of Song, 1919 Verse in Bloom, 1925 A Flight of Fancies, 1926 Messrs Bat and Ball, 1930 Close of Play, 1936 Remembrances, 1937 Love-in-a-Mist, 1939
References
Who was Who
External links
Archive Material at Leeds University Library
Poems by Norman Rowland Gale