{\b Lionel Pigot Johnson}.

{\b Date of Birth}.: 15 March 1867

{\b Date of Death}.: 4 October 1902

{\b Works}.

The Art of Thomas Hardy  (1894), Poems  (1895), Ireland and Other Poems  
(1897), Post Linimium  (published posthumously 1911).

{\b Featured Works}.

'Wales', 'Laleham: Matthew Arnolds's Grave', 'Moel Fammau', 'To Morfydd', 'The 
Dark Angel', 'The Age of a Dream', 'The Precept of Silence', 'The Church of a 
Dream', 'The Destroyer of a Soul', 'By the Statue of King Charles at Charing 
Cross'.

{\b General Comment}.

Lionel Pigot Johnson, poet and critic, was born at Broadstairs, Kent, the son 
of an Irish Army Officer. He was educated at New College, Oxford and became a 
literary journalist writing for The Athenaeum, the Spectator  and others. He 
converted to Roman Catholicism in 1891. He was a member of the 'Rhymers' 
Club', a group of poets (which included W.B. Yeats and Ernest Dowson) who met 
at the Cheshire Cheese in Fleet Street from 1891-92/3 to read poetry. As a 
result of his parentage and his admiration of W.B. Yeats, Johnson became 
interested in the Irish Literary Revival. He contributed to The Books of the 
Rhymers' Club  and The Yellow Book. His first collection, Poems  (1895), and 
Ireland and Other Poems  (1897) drew heavily on Celtic Legend. His study of 
Thomas Hardy was one of the first full-length studies to appear. Yeats praised 
his poetry, giving an account of it and Johnson's decline into alcoholism in 
his Autobiographies. Johnson died of alcoholism.