Richard Aldington

Richard Aldington was born Edward Godfree Aldington on July 8, 1892, in Hampshire, England. He studied at Dover College and London University. Aldington became friends with Ezra Pound and was an early member of the Imagist movement, publishing the poetry collection Images Old and New (The Four Seas Company, 1916). He married the poet H. D., another important figure in Imagism, in 1913; they divorced in 1938. 

In 1916, Aldington joined the British Army and went on to serve in the Royal Sussex Regiment in France. He began publishing poems about the war soon after. In February 1918, he wrote a letter to a friend:

It may seem to you that I have been almost wantonly morbid in these war poems…. You cannot know, you cannot understand, where you are, the mentality of the soldier—the profound shattering of the nerves, the over-wrought tension, the intensity of sensation which come to him.

Aldington published numerous volumes of poetry, including The Complete Poems of Richard Aldington (A. Wingate, 1948); Exile, and Other Poems (G. Allen & Unwin, 1923); and Images of War (G. Allen & Unwin, 1919). He was also known for his novels, including Death of a Hero (Covici, Friede, 1929), and his biographies, most famously Lawrence of Arabia (Collins, 1955).

Richard Aldington died in France on July 27, 1962.