JEAN

See also:

• JEAN INGELOW (1820—1897)

INGELOW (1820—1897)  , English poet and novelist, was born at Boston, in Lincolnshire, on the 17th of March 182o . She was the daughter of William Ingelow, a banker of that town . As a girl she contributed verses and tales to the magazines under the pseudonym of " Orris," but her first (anonymous) volume, A Rhyming Chronicle of Incidents and Feelings, did not appear until her thirtieth year . This Tennyson said had " very charming things " in it, and he declared he should " like to know " the author, who was later admitted to his friendship . Miss Ingelow followed this book of verse in 1851 with a story, Allerton and Dreux, but it was the publication of her Poems in 1863 which suddenly raised her to the rank of a popular writer . They ran rapidly through numerous editions, were set to music, and sung in every drawing-room, and in America obtained an even greater hold upon public estimation . In 1867 she published The Story of Doom and other Poems, and then gave up verse for a while and became industrious as a novelist . Off the Skelligs appeared in 1872, Fated to be Free in 1873, Sarah de Berenger in 188o, and John Jerome in 1886 . She also wrote Studies for Stories (1864), Stories told to a Child (1865), Mopsa the Fairy (1869), and other excellent stories for children . Her third series of Poems was published in 1885 . She resided for the last years of her life in Kensington, and somewhat outlived her popularity as a poet . She died on the 20th of July 1897 .

Her poems, which were collected in one volume in 1898, have often the genuine ballad

note, and as a writer of songs she was exceedingly successful . " Sailing beyond Seas " and " When Sparrows build " in Supper at the Mill were deservedly among the most popular songs of the day; but they share, with the rest of her work, the faults of affectation and stilted phraseology . Her best-known poem was the " High Tide on the Coast of Lincoln-shire," which reached the highest level of excellence . The blemishes of her style were cleverly indicated in a well-known parody of Calverley's; a false archaism and a deliberate assumption of unfamiliar and unnecessary synonyms for simple objects were among the most vicious of her mannerisms . She wrote, however, in verse with a sweetness which her sentiment and her heat inspired, and in prose she displayed feeling for character and the gift of narrative; while a delicate underlying tenderness is never wanting in either medium to her sometimes tortured expression . Miss Ingelow was a woman of frank and hospitable manners, with a look of the Lady Bountiful of a country parish . She had nothing of the professional authoress or the " literary lady" about her, and, as with characteristic simplicity she was accustomed to say, was no great reader . Her temperament was rather that of the improvisatore than of the professional author or artist .