Belloc, Hilaire - Michael H. Markel (essay date 1982)
Michael H. Markel (essay date 1982)
SOURCE: "The Poetry," in Hilaire Belloc, Twayne Publishers, 1982, pp. 24-53.
[In the following essay, Markel discusses the defining characteristics of Belloc's poetry.]
During a writing career of more than forty-five years, Hilaire Belloc turned out almost one hundred and fifty prose works. With only a handful of exceptions, writing these books was an enormous chore for him, what one commentator calls his "sad campaign for a livelihood." Belloc's aggressive and domineering personality prevented him from long remaining anyone's employee, so he turned his antipathy for socialists, atheists, and Darwinians into a lifelong vocation.
But Belloc's real love remained his poetry. What he wished to be remembered for is collected in a slim volume called Complete Verse. Had circumstances been otherwise, he probably would have written ten volumes of poetry and very little else. Whereas the subject of...
[The entire page is 9178 words long]
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