The Poetry of Arthur Symons

Arthur Symons was born in Milford Haven, Wales, on the 28th February 1865.

Symons rose to prominence in the 1890s as a leading member of the Rhymers' Club, a meeting group of poets that met and drank together regularly. Among their number were W B Years, Richard Le Gallienne, Ernest Dowson and, on occasion, Oscar Wilde.

The Rhymer’s club produced two anthologies of poems and together with his own collections ‘Silhouettes’ (1892) and London Nights (1895), they shocked Victorian sensibilities with their impressionistic celebrations of city life and the often erotic elements of their verse.

However, Symons was also influential with his works of criticism. In writing ‘The Symbolist Movement in Literature’ in 1899 he introduced us to Verlaine, Mallarmé, and Rimbaud. This work, and the poets therein, is often cited as formative in informing and influencing T S Eliot and the course of 20th-century poetry.

Symons suffered a severe mental collapse whilst in Italy in 1908. Although he would continue to write and publish his best years creatively were now behind him.

Arthur Symons died on the 22nd January 1945 at Tenterden in Kent. He was 79.

© 2026 Portable Poetry (E-bog): 9781807547684

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E-bog: 4. marts 2026