Coventry Patmore

Coventry Patmore
Portrait of Coventry Patmore, by John Singer Sargent, 1894.
Born	Coventry Kersey Dighton Patmore (1823-07-23)23 July 1823 Essex, England
Died	26 November 1896(1896-11-26) (aged 73) Lymington, England
Occupation	Poet and critic
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Coventry Kersey Dighton Patmore (23 July 1823 – 26 November 1896) was an English poet and critic best known for The Angel in the House, his narrative poem about an ideal happy marriage.

The eldest son of author Peter George Patmore, Coventry Patmore was born at Woodford in Essex and was privately educated. He was his father's intimate and constant companion and inherited from him his early literary enthusiasm. It was Coventry's ambition to become an artist. He showed much promise, earning the silver palette of the Society of Arts in 1838. In 1839 he was sent to school in France for six months, where he began to write poetry. On his return, his father planned to publish some of these youthful poems; Coventry however had become interested in science, and poetry was set aside.

At this time Patmore's father was financially embarrassed; and in 1846 Richard Monckton Milnes, 1st Baron Houghton obtained for Coventry the post of printed book supernumary assistant at the British Museum, a post he occupied for nineteen years, devoting his spare time to poetry. In 1847 he married Emily Augusta Andrews, daughter of Dr. Andrews of Camberwell, and by 1851 they had had two sons, Coventry (born 1848) and Tennyson (born 1850). Three daughters followed – Emily (born 1853), Bertha (born 1855) and Gertrude (born 1857), before their last child, a son (Henry John), was born in 1860.

He later returned to writing however, enthused by the success of Alfred Lord Tennyson; and in 1844 he published a small volume of Poems, which was original but uneven. Patmore, distressed at its reception, bought up the remainder of the edition and destroyed it. What upset him most was a cruel review in Blackwood's Magazine; but the enthusiasm of his friends, together with their more constructive criticism, helped foster his talent. The publication of this volume bore immediate fruit by causing its author to be introduced to various men of letters, including Dante Gabriel Rossetti, through whom Patmore became known to William Holman Hunt, and was thus drawn into the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood, contributing his poem "The Seasons" to The Germ.