Frank Prewett

Frank James Prewett (February 24, 1893 - February 16, 1962) was a Canadian poet, who spent most of his life in the United Kingdom. He was a war poet of World War I, and was taken up by Siegfried Sassoon. After a period of being lionised socially he led a mainly unsatisfactory life, suffering from bad health.

He was born near Mount Forest, Ontario and brought up on a farm near Kenilworth, Ontario. He hinted that he had an Iroquois background on his mother's side; this was once accepted in his version, but has been questioned by later scholarship. In 1915 he left his studies at the University of Toronto and enlisted as a private soldier in the Canadian Army. Later that he was offered a commission in the British Army, in the Royal Field Artillery. He served in France, and was invalided out in 1917. It was in the Craiglockhart War Hospital that he met Sassoon.

After the end of the war he was at Christ Church, Oxford, having returned to Canada briefly but not settled there. Social introductions led him to become a firm friend of Lady Ottoline Morrell. Sassoon was attracted to Prewett, whom he knew by the nickname, "Toronto", but Prewett did not return his feelings. He had an academic job from the mid-1920s to 1934 in an agricultural research institute. He married, but the marriage failed; on Sassoon's evidence he was a depression sufferer.

His poetry was recognised by inclusion in the final "Georgian Poetry" anthology and "Oxford Poetry", and by publication by the Hogarth Press; followed by a collection "The Rural Scene" in 1922. In the 1930s he was a BBC broadcaster and did editorial work. A historical novel set in Berkshire in the times of Captain Swing, "The Chazzey Tragedy" (1933), made little impact. He was married again, to Dorothy Pollard who was a colleague on the editorial staff of "The Countryman" magazine where he was working.

During World War II he served in the RAF, staying on in the Air Ministry until 1954. Retiring because of poor health, he farmed near Abingdon until his death.

Robert Graves, a friend from Oxford days, edited his "Collected Poems", published in 1964. A "Selected Poems" was published in 1987.

External links

* [http://www.lib.unb.ca/Texts/SCL/bin/get.cgi?directory=vol12_2/&filename=Coppolino.htm Article on Prewett by Andrew Coppolino]