Eugene Lee-Hamilton

Eugene Lee-Hamilton (6 January 1845 – 9 September 1907) was a late Victorian English poet. His work includes some notable sonnets in the style of Petrarch. He endowed a literary prize administered by Oriel College in Oxford University, where he was a student. The prize is open to students of Oxford and of Cambridge University and continues to this day.

Life and works

Eugene Lee-Hamilton was born in London on 6 January 1845; his parents were James Lee-Hamilton, who died in 1852, and Matilda (née Abadam, later Paget) (1815–1896), daughter of Edward Hamlyn Adams. He had a younger half sister Violet Paget, who wrote as Vernon Lee. A maternal cousin was British suffragist Alice Abadam.

Lee-Hamilton was educated mainly in France and Germany. In 1864 he was sent to the University of Oxford. In 1869 he entered the British diplomatic service. He was first attached to the Embassy at Paris, where, due to his early experiences of French life, and mastery of the French language, he was eminently suitable. After the Franco-German War broke out he took part in the Alabama arbitration at Geneva. Subsequently he was appointed secretary in the British Legation at Lisbon. He had to renounce this second position in 1873, when, suddenly, he collapsed altogether, losing the use of his legs, and suffering agonies of pain. He expressed it in one of his sonnets,

"To keep through life the posture of the grave,

While others walk and run and dance and leap."

It was to while away the tedium arising out of this malady that he first took to composing verse. All of his poetry from this time was composed without his touching pen or paper, and subsequently dictated.