Robert Bridges

Other names: 

Robert Seymour Bridges

1
Date of birth: 
23 Oct 1844
City of birth: 
Walmer, Kent
Country of birth: 
England
Date of death: 
21 Apr 1930
Location of death: 
Chilswell, England
Location: 

35 Great Ormond Street, London (student at St. Bartholomew's Hospital; 1869)

50 Maddox Street, London (1872)

52 Bedford Square, London (1877)

Boar's Hill, outside Oxford (Bridges built Chilswell on Boar's Hill)

2
About: 

Robert Bridges was born in Walmer, Kent, to father John Thomas Bridges and mother Harriet Elizabeth Affleck. He entered Eton College in 1854 and started writing poetry, and enrolled at Corpus Christi College, Oxford, in the Michaelmas term of 1863. In 1872 he joined the Savile Club where he got to know Edmund William Gosse.

In 1884, Bridges married Monica Waterhouse, who was a cousin of Roger Fry. Through this marriage, Bridges was introduced to a younger generation of writers who included W. B. Yeats, Ezra Pound, Robert Graves, Virginia Woolf and E. M. Forster. In 1912, William Rothenstein introduced Bridges to Rabindranath Tagore, whom he met again in Oxford in 1913. Tagore had won the Nobel Prize for Gitanjali in 1913 and Bridges wanted to include excerpts from it in his anthology, The Spirit of Man (1915). Gitanjali had been introduced to the British public by W. B. Yeats in 1912. Yeats and Rothenstein were to play an instrumental role in the communication between Tagore and Bridges. The controversy surrounding Tagore's inclusion in Bridges' anthology stems from Bridges' desire to refine the English of one of the Gitanjali poems. But Tagore refused and it was only the intervention of Yeats, at Bridges' request, that persuaded Tagore to let Bridges make the changes. Bridges only met Tagore on very few occasions; otherwise their relationship was entirely through correspondence and mutual friends.

One of those mutual friends was Hasan Shahid Suhrawardy, a student at Oxford, who assisted Bridges in choosing 'Oriental' poems for his anthology. In a letter to Bridges dated 8 July 1914, Tagore mentions his affection for Suhrawardy: 'I am glad you speak so well of Suhrawardy for whom I felt a very great attraction when I came to know him in Oxford, and the memory of my meeting with him still gives me pleasure.'

Basanta Kumar Mallik enrolled at Oxford in 1912 and soon became a frequent guest at Bridges' Boar's Hill home, where also W. B. Yeats was a frequent visitor.

In 1913, Bridges was made poet laureate and he remained a best selling poet throughout the 1920s. He died at his home on 21 April 1930. 

Connections: 

E. M. Forster, Edmund William Gosse (met at the Savile Club), Robert Graves (neighbour at Boar's Hill), Basanta Kumar Mallik (Mallik was a frequent guest at Bridges' Boar's Hill home), Roger Fry, Harold Monro,  Ezra Pound, William Rothenstein (Rothenstein introduced Bridges to Tagore), George Bernard Shaw, Hasan Shahid Suhrawardy (helped Bridges select 'Oriental' poems for The Spirit of Man) Rabindranath Tagore (Bridges edited and included three of Tagore's poems from Gitanjali in his 1915 anthology, The Spirit of Man), Edward John Thompson, Virginia Woolf, William Butler Yeats (persuaded Tagore to let Bridges include some of his poems in The Spirit of Man).

Network: 
Hasan Shahid Suhrawardy
Rabindranath Tagore
3
Published works: 

The Growth of Love: A Poem in Twenty-Four Sonnets (London, 1876)

Prometheus the Firegiver (Oxford: Printed at the private press of H. Daniel, 1883)

Eros and Psyche: A Poem in Twelve Measures. The Story Done Into English from the Latin of Apuleius (London: Bell, 1885)

Eight Plays (London: Bell, 1885-1894)

The Feast of Bacchus (Oxford: Privately printed by H. Daniel, 1889)

The Shorter Poems of Robert Bridges (London: Bell, 1890)

Eden: An Oratorio (London: Bell, 1891)

Achilles in Scyros (London: Bell, 1892)

The Humours of the Court: A Comedy in Three Acts (London: Bell, 1893)

Milton's Prosody (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1893)

John Keats: A Critical Essay (London: Privately printed, 1895)

The Small Hymn-Book: The Word Book of the Yattendon Hymnal (Oxford: Blackwell, Simpkin, Marshall, Hamilton, Kent, 1899)

Poetical Works, 6 vols (London: Murray, 1898-1905)

Now in Wintry Delights (Oxford: Daniel Press, 1903)

Demeter: A Mask (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1905)

On the Influence of the Audience (1907)

On the Present State of English Pronunciation (1910)

About Hymns (London, 1912)

A Tract on the Present State of English Pronunciation (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1913)

The Spirit of Man: An Anthology in English and French from the Philosophers and Poets ([S.I.]: Longmans, 1915)

An Address to the Swindon Branch of the Workers' Educational Association (Oxford: Claredon Press, 1916)

Ibant Obscuri: An Experiment in the Classical Hexameter (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1916)

Ode on the Tercentenary Commemoration of Shakespeare (1916)

The Necessity of Poetry: An Address (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1918)

Britannia Victrix (London: Oxford University Press, 1919)

On English Homophones (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1919)

October, and Other Poems (London: William Heinemann, 1920)

On the Dialectical Words in Edmund Blunden's Poems (1921)

Pictoral, Picturesque, Romantic, Grotesque, Classical (1923)

Collected Essays, Papers, etc., 10 vols (London: Oxford University Press, 1923-1934)

The Chilswell Book of English Poetry (London: Longmans, 1924)

New Verse (Oxford: Clarendon, 1925)

Robert Bridges (London: Ernest Benn, 1925)

The Society's Work (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1925)

The Tapestry: Poems (London: F. W. & S. M., 1925)

The Testament of Beauty (Oxford: Clarendon, 1929)

On Receiving Trivia from the Author (Stanford Dingley: Mill House Press, 1930)

Three Friends: Memoirs of Digby Mackworth Dolben, Richard Watson Dixon, Henry Bradley (London: Oxford University Press, 1932)

The Selected Letters of Robert Bridges: With the Correspondence of Robert Bridges and Lionel Muirhead, Donald E. Stanford (ed.), (Newark: University of Delaware Press; London: Associated University Presses, 1982-1984)

Secondary works: 

Bridges, Robert, The Selected Letters of Robert Bridges: With the Correspondence of Robert Bridges and Lionel Muirhead, 2 vols (Newark: University of Delaware Press; London: Associated University Presses, 1982-1984)

Hamilton, Lee Templin, Robert Bridges: An Annotated Bibliography, 1873-1988 (Newark: University of Delaware Press; London: Associated University Presses, 1991)

Hasan, Iqbal, Robert Bridges: A Critical Study of His Poetry, Masques and Plays (Aligarh: Printwell, 1983)

Kelshall, T. M., Robert Bridges: Poet Laureate (London: Robert Scott, 1924)

Phillips, Catherine, 'Bridges, Robert Seymour (1844-1930)', Oxford Dictionary of National Biography (Oxford University Press, 2004) [http://www.oxforddnb.com/view/article/32066]

Phillips, Catherine, Robert Bridges: A Biography (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1992)

Radhakrishnan, Sarvepalli, Basanta Kumar Mallik: A Garland of Homage (London: Vincent Stuart, 1961)

Rothenstein, William, Tagore, Rabindranath, and Lago, Mary M., Imperfect Encounter: Letters of William Rothenstein and Rabindranath Tagore, 1911-1914 (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1972)

Ritz, Jean Georges, Robert Bridges and Gerard Hopkins, 1863-1889: A Literary Friendship (London: Oxford University Press, 1960)

Sparrow, John Hanbury Angus, Robert Bridges (London: Longmans, 1962)

Tagore, Rabindranath, Dutta, Krishna, and Robinson, Andrew, Selected Letters of Rabindranath Tagore (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1997)

Thompson, Edward John, Robert Bridges, 1844-1930 (London: Oxford University Press, 1944)

Thompson, E. P., Alien Homage: Edward Thompson and Rabindranath Tagore (Delhi; Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1993)

Young, Francis Brett, Robert Bridges: A Critical Study (London: Martin Secker, 1914)

4
Example: 

Letter to Rabindranath Tagore in Robert Bridges, The Selected Letters of Robert Bridges: With the Correspondence of Robert Bridges and Lionel Muirhead, vol. 2 (Newark: University of Delaware Press; London: Associated University Presses, 1984), pp. 666-667

Content: 

Letter from Bridges to Tagore concerning the inclusion of Tagore's poem 'Nest and the Sky' in Bridges anthology, The Spirit of Man.

Extract: 

My dear Tagore

In my last letter I asked you if I might insert my rendering of your poem of the Nest and the Sky in my forthcoming anthology. I only want this one poem for my book and I gathered from your reply to me that you would allow me to use my version of it: but when application was made to Macmillan he refused me permission to make any change in your published version. I was much disappointed.

Relevance: 

Indicative of the controversy surrounding the inclusion of Tagore's poem in Bridges' anthology.

Archive source: 

Letters to Rabindranath Tagore, Bodleian Library, Oxford

Letters to Robert Graves, Bodleian Library, Oxford

Letters to Edmund William Gosse, Bodleian Library, Oxford

Letters to Harold Monro, Bodleian Library, Oxford

Letters to William Rothenstein, Bridges papers, Bodleian Library, Oxford

Letters to George Bernard Shaw, British Library, St Pancras, London, and Bodleian Library, Oxford

MSS, correspondence and literary letters, Bodleian Library, Oxford

Correspondence with Henry Bradley, Bodleian Library, Oxford

Letters to A. H. Bullen, Bodleian Library, Oxford

Correspondence with Samuel Butler, Bodleian Library, Oxford

Letters to Bertram Dobell, Bodleian Library, Oxford

Letters to Alfred Fairbank, Bodleian Library, Oxford

Letters to H. A. L. Fisher, Bodleian Library, Oxford

Letters to Edmund Gosse, Bodleian Library, Oxford

Letters to J. W. MacKail, Bodleian Library, Oxford

Letters to Harold Minto, Bodleian Library, Oxford

Letters to Gilbert Murray, Bodleian Library, Oxford

Letters to Henry Newbolt, Bodleian Library, Oxford

Letters to Logan Pearsall Smith in the Bodleian Library, Oxford

Letters to E. J. Thompson, Bodleian Library, Oxford

Correspondence with W. B. Yeats, Bodleian Library, Oxford

Letters to Lascelles Abercrombie, Bodleian Library, Oxford

Letters to A. C. Benson, Bodleian Library, Oxford

Correspondence with Samuel Butler, Sir Sidney Cockerell, Norman MacColl, E. W. Scripture, Charles Wood, British Library, St Pancras, London

Add. Ms 50529, correspondence with George Bernard Shaw, British Library, St Pancras, London

Add. Ms 73235, letters to G. K. Chesterton, British Library, St Pancras, London

Letters to F. J. H. Jenkinson, Cambridge University Library

Letters to Edmund Gosse, Perkins Library, Duke University

Letters to Sir William Rothenstein, Houghton Library, Harvard University

Letters to E. M. Forster, King's College Archive Centre, Cambridge

Letters to Roger Fry (incl. copies), King’s College Archive Centre, Cambridge

Letters to Sir Thomas Barlow; letters to Samuel Gee, Royal College of Physicians of London

Letters to C. V. Stanford, Royal College of Music, London

Letters to Percy Withers, Somerville College, Oxford

Correspondence with R. C. Trevelyan, Trinity College, Cambridge

Letters to George Bell & Sons; letters to Sir Hubert Parry and Lord Arthur Ponsonby, University of Reading Library

Letters to Sir Thomas Barlow and Lady Barlow, Wellcome Library for the History and Understanding of Medicine, London

Letters to C. H. O. Daniel, Worcester College, Oxford