Alfred Domett

Jenny Robin Jones (Independent Scholar - Europe)

Ed. by Mark Williams, Victoria University of Wellington
The Literary Encyclopedia. Volume 1.2.1.07: English Writing and Culture of the Victorian Period, 1837-1901.
Vol. editors: Gillian Fenwick (University of Toronto), Jessica Gossling (Goldsmiths College, University of London)

Dates

Born 20 May 1811
Died 2 Nov 1887
Activity 1833-1883

Places

Born in England
Active in England; New Zealand

Activities

Primary

Poet
Politician

Resources

Domett's Works

Save to Bookshelf

While pursuing a political and administrative life in colonial New Zealand Alfred Domett nurtured an ambition to achieve immortality through literature. Premier of the faction-riven colony for fourteen months and founder of its General Assembly library, after thirty years he returned to England where the epic culmination of his quiet dedication to poetry,

Ranolf and Amohia

, was published.

Alfred Domett was born in Surrey, England, on 20 May, 1811. A naval officer’s son, he published two books of poems by the age of twenty-nine, left Cambridge University without a degree and for several years travelled aimlessly in Europe, North America and the West Indies. In 1841 he was called to the Bar but remembered what he had loved about his experience in Canada, “…to have known again what it

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1000 words

Citation: Jones, Jenny Robin. "Alfred Domett". The Literary Encyclopedia. First published 20 December 2004 [https://www.litencyc.com/php/speople.php?rec=true&UID=1284, accessed 23 November 2024.]