Walter de la Mare
Walter de la Mare was born on April the 25th, 1873 in Charlton, Kent, England. He died on June 22nd, 1956, in Twickenham, Middlesex, England and is buried at St. Paul's Cathedral, London, England. He attended St. Paul's Cathedral Choir School, London, before working for the Anglo-American (Standard) Oil Company in London as a clerk in the department of statistics between the years 1890 and 1908. Subsequently, de la Mare was able to concentrate on writing full-time thanks to the offer of a government pension.
The awards and honours that de la Mare received during his lifetime of writing stories, novels, poetry and criticism - not to mention his compiling and editing of anthologies - include: Polignac Prize, Royal Society of Literature, 1911, for The Return; James Tait Black Memorial Prize for Fiction, 1922, for Memoirs of a Midget; Carnegie Medal, Library Association, 1947, for Collected Stories for Children; Companion of Honour, 1948; Order of Merit, 1953; Foyle Poetry Prize, 1954; honorary degrees from several universities, including Cambridge, Oxford, St. Andrews, London.
For further reading, please see Theresa Whistler's wonderful and authoritative biography of Walter de la Mare:
