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William Ernest Henley |
Most great poets are known for a dozen works out of a lifetime of writing. But some, like William Ernest Henley, are known for only one. At the age of twelve, he was diagnosed with tuberculosis of the bone, and one leg was amputated below the knee. He grew into a large, jovial man with a red beard, a wooden leg, and a crutch, inspiring his friend Robert Louis Stevenson to create Long John Silver, his most famous character. But the tuberculosis continued to erode his bones and, after nine years of pain and treatment, doctors wanted to take his other leg.
As he lay in the hospital bed at twenty-five, he wrote “Invictus”. It turned out that Joseph Lister, the pioneering surgeon, saved his other leg, and Henley became a famous editor, bringing Kipling, Yeats, and others into the literary world.
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Immortal Poets: Their Lives and Verse, by Christopher Burns |