The Stricken Deer or The Life of Cowper by David Cecil

The Stricken Deer or The Life of Cowper

by David Cecil

Constable & Co., 1930, black and white illustrated frontispiece, black and white plates, hardcover

Very Good Condition, some edge and shelf wear, some rubbing and bumping to edges and corners, some rubbing and wear to covers and spine, previous owners details on front end-paper, minor foxing to introductory pages (see photographs)

"First published in 1929, The Stricken Deer was the winner of that year's James Tait Black Memorial Prize and also the Hawthornden Prize: it was David Cecil's first book.  
For a time, towards the end of the eighteenth-century, William Cowper was the foremost poet in England. But David Cecil's biography doesn't celebrate a life of success, rather, in Cowper's own words, 'the strange and uncommon incidents of my life.' Cowper suffered from severe bouts of depression. His personal tragedy however enriched English literature: the fear of madness made him turn to writing poetry as a form of mental discipline, and isolation for the great world and from his own kind helped him to become the most enchanting of letter-writers."