{\b John Davidson}.

{\b Date of Birth}.: 1857

{\b Date of Death}.: 1909

{\b Works}.

Scottish poet, novelist and dramatist. Published a series of highly individual 
plays including Bruce (1886), Smith; a tragic Farce (1888), and Scaramouch in 
Naxos (1889). His first novel Perfervid appeared in 1890.

 His unconventionality is also evident in his poetical works. Fleet Street 
Eclogues (1893) was followed by Ballads and Songs (1897), A Second Series of 
Fleet Street Eclogues (1896), New Ballads (1897) and The Last Ballad (1899). 
Between 1901 and 1908 he wrote a series of Testaments, in blank verse, which 
expressed a materialistic and pessimistic philosophy.

{\b Featured Works}.

'In Romney Marsh', 'The Price', 'A Runnable Stag', 'St. Michael's Mount', 
'Waiting', 'Thirty Bob a Week'.

{\b General Comment}.

John Davidson was born, the son of an Evangelical preacher, in Barrhead, 
Renfrewshire, Scotland. He was educated at the Highlander's Academy, Greenock, 
where he became a pupil-teacher (1872-76). He then went to Edinburgh 
University before reluctantly becoming a schoolmaster. He moved to London in 
1899 already having published four plays and two novels. The publication of 
Fleet Street Eclogues in 1896 showed that Davidson possessed a genuine poetic 
gift.

The gritty realism, the urban imagery, and the general pessimism of his poetic 
works had an influential effect on writers such as T.S.Eliot who later 
acknowledged his debt to Davidson's 'dingy urban images' and his use of 
colloquial idiom (everyday speech), singling out his most famous ballad 
'Thirty Bob a Week'.

The rebellious philosophy expounded in Davidson's later poetic work is spelt 
out in the introduction to 'The Theatrocrat' (1905), one of the series of  
'Testaments' he wrote between 1901 and 1907. He committed suicide in 1909 
leaving behind an unfinished poem 'God and Mammon'.