[William Henry]. British poet, born at Newport, Monmouth on April 20. He was apprenticed to a picture-frame maker, but when his apprentice days were over he tramped through America, crossed the Atlantic many times on cattle boats, became a pedlar and street singer in England, and after eight years of this life published his first volume of poems, The Soul’s Destroyer, from the Marshalsea prison. Next year appeared in prose The Autobiography of a Super-Tramp (1908) with a preface by George Bernard Shaw, as well as Nature Poems and Others. A collected edition of his poems appeared in 1916, and Forty New Poems in 1918. He also published a novel, A Weak Woman (1911), and volumes of nature studies and essays, including A Poet’s Pilgrimage (1918). See also “Days Too Short,” etc.
