Life
1867-1902 [Lionel Pigot Johnson]; third son of Irish army officer; his
grandfather created baronet for services in 1798; b. Broadstairs, Kent;
ed. Winchester College and Oxon; ed. The Wykehamist [at Winchester],
1884-86; became journalist in 1890 following brilliant academic career;
converted to Catholicism 1891; joined Rhymers’ Club, 1891; introduced
Wilde to Lord Alfred Douglas, 1891; influenced by Yeats, he took a lively
interest in the Irish Literary Society; compelled Yeats to read a copy
of Plato; introduced Yeats to his cousin Olivia Shakespear, 1894; first
volume of poems expressed ‘Catholic Puritanism’; Ireland
and Other Poems (1897) shows intense love for Ireland; final trip
to Ireland for 1798 centenary; also The Art of Thomas Hardy (Elkin
Mathews 1894), and Post Liminium, Essays and Critical Papers (1911);
ed. Irish Home Reading Magazine with Eleanor Hull; Johnson was represented
in William Sharp’s Lyra Celtica and subsequent Irish anthologies;
notable poems incl. ‘Ways of War’, ‘Celtic Speech’,
and ‘To Morfydd’; he is described in Yeats’s Autobiographies
(1955 Edn., p.222), and also in ‘In Memory of Robert Gregory’;
he was a nominal editor of the Irish Literature (1904) anthology
edited by Justin McCarthy. JMC DBIV OCIL
[ top ]
Works
The Art of Thomas Hardy (London: Elkin Matthews [sic] 1894; new
rev. ed. 1923); Poems [1st edn.] (London: Elkin Mathews 1895),
116pp.; Ireland and Other Poems (Mathews 1897); Twenty-One Poems
by Lionel Johnson, selected by WB Yeats (Dundrum: Dun Emer Press 1904);
Selections frm the Poems of Lionel Johnson, including some now collected
for the first time with prefatory memoir by C. Shorter (Mathews 1908);
Poetry and Ireland, Essays by W B Yeats and Lionel Johnson (Dublin:
Cuala MCMVIII [1908]), incl. ‘Poetry and Patriotism’ by Johnson,
delivered to the National Literary Society, Dublin, 1894; T. Whitmore,
with LI Guiney, eds., Post Liminium. Essays and Critical Papers
(London: Elkin Mathews 1911); Poetical Works, pref. Ezra Pound
(London: Elkin Mathews 1915); The Religious Poems of Lionel Johnson,
pref. W. Meynell (London: Elkin Mathews 1916); Earl Russell, ed., Some
Winchester Letters (London: Elkin Mathews 1919); R. Shaffer, ed.,
Reviews and Critical Papers (London: Elkin Mathews 1921); also
Selected Poems (1st, Augustan Books ser., Benn 1931) 30pp.; I.
Fletcher, ed., Collected Poems (NY: Unicorn 1982).
Also, essay in Prose Writings of Mangan, ed. D. J. O’Donoghue (M. H. Gill; London: A. H. Bullen 1904) [Centenary Edn.].
[ top ]
Criticism
D. Scott, in Men of Letters (Lon 1916).
A. W. Patrick, Lionel Johnson, poete et critque 1867-1902 (Paris: Flammarion 1939).
D[enis] Donoghue, [ed.,] Memoirs (Lon 1972).
Ian Small, ‘Yeats and Johnson on the Limitations of Patriotic Art’, Studies, Vol. LXIII, 1974), pp.379-88.
Irish Book Lover, Vol. 7 (1916) p.56.
A. N. Jeffares, W. B. Yeats, A New Life (London: Hutchinson 1988).
W. B. Yeats, Autobiographies (London: Macmillan
1955); Yeats’s Early Years, ‘The Tragic Generation’ [Chap.], makes reference to Johnson at pp.165-68, 189, 221-24, 285, 290, 300, 301, 302-3, 304-08, 310, 310-311, 312, 314, 318-19, 325, 493, 494.
W. B. Yeats, review of Ireland and Other Poems, in Bookman (Feb. 1898).
John P. Frayne, ed., Uncollected Prose of W. B. Yeats, Vol. 1, 1970, Pref., p.75.)
Mark Storey, Poetry and Ireland since 1800, A Source Book (1988), pp.93-106.
Ian Small, ‘Yeats and Johnson on the Limitations of Patriotic Art, in Studies, 63 (Winter 1974), pp.379-88.’
Frank Tuohy, Yeats (1976), pp.83-84.
W. P. Ryan, The Irish Literary Revival (1894).
[ top ]
Notes
Dictionary of National Biography, gives details: b. Broadstairs,
Kent, son of Army captain; ... ‘His interest in nationalist politics
and in the Irish literary revival was fostered by a visit to Ireland in
Sept. 1893, which he often repeated, but his own alleged Irish origin
was a literary pose, and Celtic influences had reached him first through
Wales.’ NOTE OXCO (Abbey Theatre), the first night ... opened with
a prologue by Lionel Johnston ... [RW]
Irish Literature, Justin McCarthy, ed., (Washington: University of America 1904) gives extract from Ireland, Historical and Picturesque. The note on Allingham in Rolleston and Brooke’s Treasury of Irish Poetry is by Johnson, who says, ‘song upon song makes no mention, direct or indirect, of Ireland, yet reveals an Irish atmosphere and temperament. ... always essentially an Irishman of the secluded west, with ancient visions and ponderings in his hear, and the gift of tears and smiles. ... etc.’ [SEE AP Graves, Irish Lit. & Mus. Studies (1913), p. 79].
Brian McKenna, Irish Literature (1978), Lionel, Johnson, ‘Clarence Mangan,’ in Academy 53 (189), rpt. in Post Liminium, ed. Thomas Whittemore (1911) [a review of O’Donoghue’s Life paying tribute to ‘greatest Irish poet who has ever sung in English’]; also prefatory essay in O’Donoghue’s centenary edition of The Prose Writings of James Clarence Mangan (1904). SEE also Warwick Gould’, Lionel Johnson comes first to mind’, Sources for Owen Aherne, in ); G. M Harper, ed., Yeats and The Occult [Yeats Studies Series] (Macmillan 1975), pp.255-84.
Seamus Deane, gen. ed., Field Day Anthology (Derry: Field Day 1991), Vol. 2; selects from Poems, ‘Mystic and Cavelier’; ‘The Dark Angel’ [‘...with thine aching lust/To rid the world of penitence, /Malicious angel, who still dost/My soul such subtile violence!’; ‘By the Statue of King Charles at Charing Cross’; from Ireland, and Other Poems, ‘Ninety-Eight’ [beginning ital. ‘Who fears to speak of Ninety-Eight’?/He, who despairs of Ireland still: /Whose paltry soul finds nothing great/In honest failure ... ‘ and ‘The man, who fears to speak of death’, and ‘The enemy of Ireland fears!’ and ending ‘True harts that beat in Ninety-Eight’], ‘Parnell’ [‘Her morning light, that fled;/Her morning star, that fell’], 745-48; remarks and refs, appropriate ... that Lionel Johnson, one of the best known of the English decadent poets, should be an honorary Irishman. Whistler’s London was not sufficiently twilit; Yeats’s Ireland had more of the tremulous glimmer so beloved of the decadent school. Yet Johnson’s poems on Irish subjects are very far from his best. Ireland (and Yeats) managed to be an avocation without ever becoming an inspiration. But Johnson remained relatively unread. His contribution to Irish poetry important only as a reminder of the appeal of Ireland as a minority cause to the intellectuals and writers of the decadent era [Seamus Heaney, ed.], 720; Wilde become more English than Johnson could ever become Irish [ibid.], 721; (his Parnell poem one of many, cf. Seamuas O’Sullivan), 755; Yeats, ‘In Memory of Major Robert Gregory’, Lionel Johnson comes first to mind,/That loved his learning better than mankind,/Though courteous to the worst, much falling he/Brooded upon sanctity/Till all his Greek and Latin learning seemed/A long blast upon the horn that brought/A little nearer to his thought/A measureless comsummated that he dreamed’, 801-02; DP Moran criticises the inclusion of so much of ‘the symbolic school’ in Stopford Brooke, 971n; Lionel Johnson cited with Nora Chesson by Thomas MacDonagh as ‘one of a few ‘who were born and who lived their whole lives out of Ireland, and yet are truly Irish (Literature in Ireland, 1916), 990; 780 [BIOG, WORKS & COMM as supra.]
Eric Stevens (Cat. 1992), lists Poems (Elkin Mathews 1895) [1st ed., 750 copies], 116pp, title page designed by HP Horne, finely printed at Chiswick Press, bookplate Holbrook Jackson [£135].
Peter Ellis (Cat. 10; 2002) lists Reviews & Critical Papers (London: Elkin Mthews 1921), 109pp., 1st ed., with 8pp. intor. by Rober Shafer; armorial bookpl. of William Marchbank; no dw [£75].
D. J. O’Donoghue, Irish Ability, 1906, endpapers: Prose Writings of Mangan, now first collected, and edited by D. J. O’Donoghue, with an essay by Lionel Johnson, and a new port., nearly 400pp.
Belfast Public Library holds Poems (1908); Religious Poems (1916); Twenty One Poems (1904).
Portrait, a juvenile half-profile appeared in The Gael, Oct.
1899.
[ top ]
Princess Grace Irish Library (Monaco)