O'Shaughnessy, Arthur

▪ British poet

in full  Arthur William Edgar O'Shaughnessy  

born March 14, 1844, London, Eng.

died Jan. 30, 1881, London

      British poet best known for his much-anthologized “Ode” (“We are the music-makers”).

      O'Shaughnessy became a copyist in the library of the British Museum at age 17 and later became a herpetologist in the museum's zoological department. He published four volumes of verse—An Epic of Women (1870), Lays of France (1872), Music and Moonlight (1874), and Songs of a Worker (1881)—and, with his wife, a volume of stories for children, Toyland (1875). O'Shaughnessy was strongly influenced by the artists and writers of the Pre-Raphaelite (Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood) group, by contemporary French poetry (translations of Paul Verlaine (Verlaine, Paul) and of the Parnassian poets Sully Prudhomme and Catulle Mendès (Mendès, Catulle) are included in his last volume), and by Algernon Charles Swinburne (Swinburne, Algernon Charles). O'Shaughnessy is at his best in the Swinburnian poems about wicked women in his first collection, though he is chiefly remembered for the otherworldly later work that links him with the Symbolist movement.

Additional Reading

Louise Chandler Moulton, Arthur O'Shaughnessy: His Life and His Work (1894).

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