Walter de la Mare (1873-1956) was born in Charlton, Kent. In 1890, aged sixteen, he began work in the statistics department of the London office of Anglo-American Oil. In 1907 he published his first collection of poems under the pseudonym Walter Ramal, but he soon established a wide popular reputation in his own name as a leading poet of the Georgian period with volumes like The Listeners (1912), Peacock Pie (1913), Motley (1918) and The Veil (1921). He also wrote poetry and short stories for children and Peacock Pie, an anthology of poems for children, is now considered a twentieth-century classic.
