Johnson was a poet, critic and literary scholar. He was a close friend of W. B. Yeats and member of the Rhymers’ Club. Famously diminutive in stature – he was 5 foot 3 inches tall – Johnson was a prolific prose writer, contributing articles and reviews to newspapers, magazines and journals. He was specially influenced by the “classical” tradition in English as represented by Thomas Gray and Matthew Arnold, but in the early 1890s when he was writing poetry his two other passions predominated: Catholicism (to which he converted in 1891), and Celticism. Poems appeared in 1895 and Ireland with other Poems in 1897.
Lionel Pigot Johnson was born in Broadstairs, Kent, on 15 March 1867, the sixth child and third …
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Citation: Desmarais, Jane. "Lionel Johnson". The Literary Encyclopedia. First published 10 November 2014 [https://staging.litencyc.com/php/speople.php?rec=true&UID=2383, accessed 22 November 2024.]
