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John Drinkwater (1 June 1882 - 25 March 1937) was an English poet and dramatist.

He was born in Leytonstone, London, and worked as an insurance clerk. In the period immediately before the First World War, he was one of the group of poets associated with the Gloucestershire village of Dymock, along with Rupert Brooke and others.

In 1918, he scored his first major success with his play, Abraham Lincoln. He followed it up with other plays in a similar vein, including Mary Stuart and Oliver Cromwell. Although he had been active with the Dymock poets, it was not until 1923 that he published his first collection of poetry. He progressed into literary criticism, and later became manager of Birmingham Repertory Theatre.

He was married to Daisy Kennedy, the ex-wife of Benno Moiseiwitsch.

Papers relating to John Drinkwater and collected by his step daughter are held at the University of Birmingham Special Collections.

John Drinkwater made recordings in the Columbia Records 'International Educational Society' Lecture series. They include Lecture 10 - a lecture on 'The Speaking of Verse' (Four 78rpm sides, Cat no. D 40018-40019), and Lecture 70 'John Drinkwater reading his own poems' (Four 78rpm sides, Cat no. D 40140-40141).

His name was given to a towerblock on a 1960's council estate in Leytonstone.

This author page uses material from the Wikipedia article "John Drinkwater", which is released under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share-Alike License 3.0