About Walter de la Mare
Walter John de la Mare (born April 25, 1873 and died June 22, 1956, was a British writer, author of novels and short stories, also known for his children's books and his poem The Listeners. He published his first book, Songs of Childhood, under the name of Walter Ramal. He was highly acclaimed for his poetry and received honorary doctorates from the Universities of Oxford, London and Bristol. From 1918 Walter de la Mare was a member of the jury for the awarding of the Hawthornden Prize, the oldest literary prize in Great Britain. In 1955 he was elected as a non-resident honorary member of the American Academy of Arts and Letters.De la Mare is best known for its imaginative children's and nonsense verses. In his narrative works he represents a romantic world view directed against the dominance of the Real or Visible, in which that which lies beyond sensual experience repeatedly breaks into the real world. One of Walter de la Mare's interests was the imagination, which he used both in his children's books and in the rest of his writing. This brought him popularity for his children's texts, but caused his other books to be taken less seriously. De la Mare also wrote psychological horror stories: Seaton's Aunt and From the Bottom of the Abyss. His 1921 novel, Memoirs of a Midget, received the James Tait Black Memorial Prize.
He died at Twickenham, he was diagnosed a few years earlier with Parkinson's disease. His ashes are buried in St. Paul's Cathedral in London.
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