Rupert Brooke Poet Part I

Rupert Brooke was born in 1887…to William Brooke, a schoolmaster and his wife, who was a school matron.  The family was respectably middle class.   His father moved to a post at the famous public School, Rugby, before his birth and Rupert was born there... His father had a post as House master.  Schools were divided into houses. And played sport matches between their houses.  They ate and slept in these houses and the head master of each house would be expected to provide something of a home atmosphere for them, during their school days.  Rupert was intelligent and grew to be a handsome young man.    He had 2 brothers and one sister Edith.  She died in infancy.   

Rupert went to a preparatory school, which was designed for younger boys, to prepare them for public school.  Then he completed his school education at Rugby…  

He was interested in literature and drama and wrote a thesis on Elizabethan drama, which secured him a scholarship to Kings College Cambridge. When up at Cambridge, he was keen on Socialism and joined the Fabian Society. He also became friends with many women who were the first generation of women to study at University.   However he had had several romantic relationships with boys and young men and seems to have been bisexual. His longest relationship with a woman was with Katherine “Ka” Cox... who was the daughter of a liberally minded stockbroker who had encouraged her to study and go to University.  He was determined to be a writer and on leaving Cambridge, began to write poems.. being part of the "Georgian School"....
Rupert was a handsome and charming young man, and fitted in well with the romantic image of a poet, especially one who wrote about rural life.  A friend wrote of him that he was a “Young Apollo, golden haired” and his charm won him many friends, at school and university…

The Georgian school of poetry covered traditional subjects and was more traditional in its writing style than the new school of Modernists who cultivated simplicity, directness and such style as free verse.  Brooke’s poems were occasionally mildly shocking in their subject matter and soemtimes slighty "black comedy" but he was not an innovator.