William Ernest Henley (1849-1903) · CatalogWilliam Ernest HenleyWilliam Ernest Henley (1849-1903) · CatalogEnglish poet, critic and editor, author of Invictus.
Author
William Ernest Henley
1849-1903 · English poet, critic and editor, author of Invictus
William Ernest Henley (1849-1903) was an English poet, critic and editor. Tuberculosis of the bone cost him his left leg below the knee as a young man, and from 1873 to 1875 he was a patient of Joseph Lister at the Royal Infirmary of Edinburgh, where he wrote the In Hospital poems and Invictus. A close friend of Robert Louis Stevenson, he became a model for Long John Silver, and as editor of the Scots Observer and National Observer he published early work by Kipling and others.
Written 1875; published 1888 · 19th Century · Poetry
Invictus is a sixteen-line poem by the English poet William Ernest Henley. He wrote it in 1875 while he was a long-term patient at the Royal Infirmary of Edinburgh, where the surgeon Joseph Lister was trying to save his remaining leg from tuberculosis of the bone.