Lascelles Abercrombie

Lascelles Abercrombie combined poetry, drama, and literary criticism, joining the Georgian poets before moving into university teaching. Emblems Of Love, first issued in 1912, gathers dramatic and lyrical pieces that examine affection, desire, marriage, and spiritual commitment through distinct speakers and situations. The Epic, published by Martin Secker in 1914, takes a different form: it is a compact critical study of epic poetry, considering heroic tradition, literary form, and works from Homer and Beowulf to Milton. Together the two books show the breadth of Abercrombie’s practice, moving from imaginative poetry to sustained criticism. He later taught poetry at Liverpool and held the Goldsmiths’ Readership at Oxford, while the British Academy remembered both his verse and scholarship. The 1922 reset edition expands the displayed title of The Epic to The Epic: An Essay. Emblems Of Love also appears in conventional title case as Emblems of Love, making the preserved capitalization an edition-level metadata issue rather than a different work.