Edward Lucie-Smith (John Edward Mackenzie Lucie-Smith) Biography

British poet and art historian, born in Kingston, Jamaica, educated at Merton College, Oxford. He was an advertising copywriter from 1956 to 1966, when he became a freelance writer. He was a prominent member of the Group and, with Philip Hobsbaum, co-edited A Group Anthology (1963). His principal collections of poetry are A Tropical Childhood (1961), Confessions and Histories (1964), Towards Silence (1968), and The Well-Wisher (1974). The conventional accomplishment of his earlier work was superseded by the growing imaginative range apparent in his use of dramatic monologue modes. His later work displays a leisured intensity appropriate to the meditatively erotic content of many poems. He is a prolific author of authoritative works on art history, among which are Eroticism in Western Art (1972), Art Deco Painting (1990), Art and Civilization (1992), British Art Now (1993), and Elisabeth Frink (1994). His numerous translations include highly regarded versions of Paul Claudel's Five Great Odes (1967). Among his other works are The Dark Pageant (1977), a novel based on the life of Gilles de Rais, and an autobiography entitled The Burnt Child (1975). The many works he has edited include the popular The Liverpool Scene (1967) (see Liverpool Poets), and The Faber Book of Art Anecdotes (1992).