Queer Places:
University of Oxford, Oxford, Oxfordshire OX1 3PA
Rugby School, Lawrence Sheriff St, Rugby CV22 5EH
Norman Rowland Gale (March 4, 1862 - October 7, 1942) was born in Kew, Surrey, on March 4, 1862. He entered Exeter College, Oxford, in 1880 and graduated in 1884. He
initially worked as a teacher for some years before transitioning to writing full-time in 1892. Over a period of nearly fifty years, he published a vast number of books as
a poet, novelist, and reviewer. His pastoral and lyrical poetry volumes include works such as A Country Muse (1892) and Orchard Songs (1893). Furthermore, his poems
"Betrothed" and "The Call" appeared in the prominent periodical The Yellow Book. His best-known poem is probably "The Country Faith," which was selected for inclusion in
The Oxford Book of English Verse. Its reach extended internationally to the United States, where Louis Untermeyer included it in his anthology Modern British Poetry, and
it opened the second reader in Cora Wilson Stewart's Country Life Readers series under the changed title "Life in the Country."
During his life, Gale maintained connections within wider literary circles, including contacts with figures such as the Uranian poet and photographer
John Gambrill Francis Nicholson, who interacted with a broad network of intellectuals, artists, and reformers linked to
the era's broader counter-cultural and progressive movements, which also intersected with early homosexual advocacy networks like
George Cecil Ives's Order of Chaeronea. For the last two years of his life, Gale lived in Headley Down, Hampshire, where
he passed away on October 7, 1942, at the age of eighty.
References:
- https://www.guyburch.co.uk/?p=4755
- Untermeyer, Louis (Ed.). Modern British Poetry: A Critical Introduction. 3rd revised edition. New York: Harcourt, Brace and Company, 1930. (Includes biographical and critical context alongside Gale's poem "The Country Faith").
- The Yellow Book. Volume 2 (July 1894) and Volume 5 (April 1895). London: Elkin Mathews & John Lane. (Contains original printings of Gale's poems "Betrothed" and "The Call").
- The Oxford Book of English Verse, 1250–1900. Oxford: Clarendon Press. (Features Gale's widely anthologized poem "The Country Faith").
- Stewart, Cora Wilson. Country Life Readers, Second Reader. (Opens with Gale's poem under the modified title "Life in the Country").
- Seeney, Michael. A Six Foot Three Nightingale: Norman Gale, 1862–1942: A Biographical Essay and Check-List. Oxford: Rivendale Press, 1998.
- Hampshire Telegraph and Post. Obituary notice for Norman Rowland Gale, October 23, 1942, p. 8.
- Leeds University Library. Special Collections and archive material regarding Norman Rowland Gale.
- Digital Victorian Periodical Poetry. Online database documenting periodical contributions, publication history, and texts.
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