Brooke, Rupert (Chawner) (1887-1915)

English poet. He stands as a symbol of the World War I ‘lost generation’. His five war sonnets, including ‘The Soldier’, were published after his death. Other notable poems are ‘Grantchester’ (1912) and ‘The Great Lover’, written in 1914. Brooke's war sonnets were published in 1914 and Other Poems (1915); they caught the prevailing early wartime spirit of selfless patriotism.

Brooke was born in Rugby, Warwickshire. He was awarded a fellowship at King's, his own college at Cambridge University, in 1913, but having had a nervous breakdown he travelled abroad. He toured America (Letters from America, 1916), New Zealand, and the South Seas, and in 1914 became an officer in the Royal Naval Volunteer Reserve. After fighting at Antwerp, Belgium, he sailed for the Dardanelles, but died of blood poisoning on the Greek island of Skyros, where he is buried.