| British poet, critic, and editor, William Ernest Henley, born this day in 1849, introduced the early work of many of the great English writers of the 1890s in his journals. While recovering from a surgery in 1873–75, Henley began writing free-verse impressionistic poems about hospital life that established his poetic reputation. These were included in A Book of Verses (1888). Dating from the same period is his most popular poem, Invictus (1875). The rest of his best-known work is contained in London Voluntaries (1893) and In Hospital (1903). |