Arthur St. John Adcock

Arthur St John Adcock (17 January 1864 – 9 June 1930), was an English novelist and poet, known as A. St John Adcock or St John Adcock. He is remembered for his discovery of the then-unknown poet W. H. Davies.

Adcock was born in London. He was a Fleet Street journalist for half a century, as an assiduous freelance writer. He worked initially as a law office clerk, becoming full-time as a writer in 1893. He built up a literary career by unrelenting efforts in circulating his manuscripts, initially also working part-time as an assistant editor on a trade journal. He was a founder member in 1901 of Paul Henry's literary and performing club, with Robert Lynd, Frank Rutter and others.

The acting editor of The Bookman from 1908, Adcock, according to A. E. Waite who knew him, did all the work of the Bookman, nominally under its founder William Robertson Nicoll. In 1923 he became also its titular editor. As an influential critic, he has been classed with conservatives such as Hilaire Belloc, Edmund Gosse, Henry Newbolt, E. B. Osborn and Arthur Waugh.

Adcock's papers are held by the Bodleian Library.

Adcock is considered one of the "Cockney school novelists" (not the earlier Cockney School poets), a group influenced by Charles Dickens and including also Henry Nevinson, Edwin Pugh, and William Pett Ridge.East End Idylls (1897), about the London slums, began an early trilogy, and had an introduction by the Christian Socialist James Granville Adderley, a friend. It drew on Arthur Morrison.

...
Wikipedia