MASSEY, Gerald. MY LYRICAL LIFE.POEMS OLD & NEW. 1890.
Kegan, Paul, Trench & Trubner. 2nd Edn. 1st series with additions.
Contains 40pp War & Patriotic poems. £10.00

Gerald Massey (29 May 1828 - 29 October 1907) was an English poet and self-taught Egyptologist. He was born near Tring, Hertfordshire in England.

Massey's first public appearance as a writer was in connection with a journal called the Spirit of Freedom, of which he became editor, and he was only twenty-two when he published his first volume of poems, Voices of Freedom and Lyrics of Love (1850). These he followed in rapid succession with The Ballad of Babe Christabel (1854), War Waits (1855), Havelock's March (1860), and A Tale of Eternity (1869).

Massey's poetry has a certain rough and vigorous element of sincerity and strength which easily accounts for its popularity at the time of its production. He treated the theme of Sir Richard Grenville before Tennyson thought of using it, with much force and vitality. Indeed, Tennyson's own praise of Massey's work is still its best eulogy, for the Laureate found in him a poet of fine lyrical impulse, and of a rich half-Oriental imagination. The inspiration of his poetry is essentially British; he was a patriot to the core.

Many years afterward in 1889, Massey collected the best of the contents of these volumes, with additions, into a two-volume edition of his poems called My Lyrical Life.