Claude Colleer Abbott
Claude Colleer Abbott (1889–1971) was an English poet, scholar and university lecturer, the 'C. C. Abbott' of academic publications. He is principally known as the editor of Gerard Manley Hopkins' correspondence.
Claude Colleer Abbott | |
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Born | 17 April 1889 Broomfield, Essex, England |
Died | 17 September 1971 82) | (aged
Occupation | Academic |
Life and career
The son of a butcher[1] and brother of the poet H. H. Abbott, Claude Colleer Abbott (who usually signed himself 'C. Colleer Abbott') was educated at King Edward VI Grammar School, Chelmsford,[2] and the University of London (B.A. 1913, M.A. 1915). He taught at Sudbury Grammar School,[3] and Middlesbrough High School, before being conscripted, late in the War, in 1918.[4] He joined the Artists Rifles O.T.C. and then served in the Irish Guards Special Reserve as second lieutenant.[3][5] After the War he studied at Gonville and Caius College, Cambridge (B.A. 1921, Ph.D. 1926), then lectured in English Language and Literature at the University of Aberdeen (1921–1932) and at Durham University (1932–1954), where he became Professor of English.[3]
Abbott is also remembered as an art collector and benefactor of galleries and libraries.[6]
Poems
"Thankful for his country upbringing," Abbott, in his most typical poems, "tried to understand with greater love the existence and savour of country folk in Essex and Suffolk." [7] His poems frequently focus on local characters – eccentrics and solitaries in Essex and Suffolk villages – on people in inns, on rural labourers, on rustic lovers.
Fulfilled love came to Abbott comparatively late in life,[8] and was the subject of his most ambitious poem, the long retrospective sequence called Summer Love, begun in the 1930s but not printed till 1958. It describes, in a variety of verse-forms, the pivotal love affair of his life, conducted during a long summer revisit to East Anglia with an unnamed woman from the North unfamiliar with the area and enchanted by it. "You who loved in July the drooping elms along these Essex lanes, / The willows fledging every idle stream ..." The affair was consummated high up inside a old elm, "the massive hollow trunk grotesquely bossed, with mighty boughs above." [9][note 1]
The poems also contain much sensitive observation of wildlife and landscape. The numerous references to the elmscapes and waterways of East Anglia make Abbott a sort of verse Constable. His poems were occasionally anthologised, 'Stallion', for example, appearing in Younger Poets of To-day (1932), edited by J. C. Squire. Among others there are poems dedicated to Robert Bridges and Edmund Blunden. Despite Abbott's admiration for Hopkins, there is no trace in his poems of any theology.
Publications
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Poetry
- Youth and Age (1918)
- Poems (1921)
- Miss Bedell and Other Poems (1924)
- Ploughed Earth (1930)
- Early Verses (1938)
- The Sand Castle and Other Poems (1946)
- Summer Love (1958)
- The Collected Poems of Claude Colleer Abbott (1963)
Translations
- Nine Songs from the Twelfth Century French (1920)
- Early Mediaeval French Lyrics (1932): texts, verse translations, introduction
- The Seafarer: a modern version (1943): translation from the Old English
Scholarship
- The Life and Letters of George Darley, poet and critic (1928)
- Letters of Gerard Manley Hopkins to Robert Bridges (1935; revised 1955)
- Correspondence of Gerard Manley Hopkins and Richard Watson Dixon (1935; revised 1955)
- A Catalogue of Papers relating to Boswell, Johnson and Sir William Forbes, found at Fettercairn House (1936)
- Further Letters of Gerard Manley Hopkins, including his correspondence with Patmore (1938; revised 1956)
- Poet and Painter: being the correspondence between Gordon Bottomley and Paul Nash, 1910–1946 (1955): edited by Claude Colleer Abbott and Anthony Bertram
Notes
- One of the Stuart elms at Numble End.
References
- Admissions register, King Edward VI Grammar School, Chelmsford
- Notable alumni, kegs.org.uk
- Who's Who 1943 (A & C Black, London, 1943)
- 'Grounds for Appeal: The North Riding Appeal Tribunal Papers 1916-1918'
- forgottenpoetsofww1 Forgotten poets of World War I: Claude Colleer Abbott
- Abbott, Claude Colleer, snaccooperative.org
- Dust-wrapper, The Collected Poems of Claude Colleer Abbott (London, 1963)
- C. C. Abbott, Summer Love, III, XVIII (Oxford, 1958)
- C. C. Abbott, Summer Love, XXXVIII (Oxford, 1958)
- From C. C. Abbott, Miss Bedell, and Other Poems (London, 1924)