View source for Richard Barham Middleton

{{Short description|English poet and story writer (1882–1911)}}
{{Use dmy dates|date=April 2022}}
[[File:Richard Barham Middleton 002.jpg|thumb|Richard Barham Middleton c. 1909]]
'''Richard Barham Middleton''' (28 October 1882 – 1 December 1911) was an English poet and author. He is remembered most for his short ghost stories, in particular "The Ghost Ship".<ref>[[Darrell Schweitzer]], "Richard Middleton: Beauty, Sadness, and Terror", in: Darrell Schweitzer, ed., ''Discovering Classic Horror Fiction I''. Mercer Island, WA: Starmont, 1992 {{ISBN|1-55742-084-X}}, pp. 34–40.</ref>

==Biography==
Born in [[Staines Urban District|Staines, Middlesex]],<ref>Hellnotes [http://hellnotes.com/old-masters-of-horror-richard-middelton/ Retrieved 22 October 2016.]</ref> Middleton was educated at [[Cranbrook School Kent|Cranbrook School]], [[Kent]]. He then worked as a clerk at the [[Royal Exchange Assurance|Royal Exchange Assurance Corporation]] bank in London from 1901 to 1907. Unhappy with that, he affected a [[Bohemianism|Bohemian]] life at night – he is mentioned, in disguised terms, in [[Arthur Ransome]]'s ''Bohemia in London''. He moved out of his parents' house into rooms in Blackfriars and joined the New Bohemians, a club where he acquired literary contacts, including [[Arthur Machen]], Louis McQuilland (1880–1946) and Christopher Wilson.

Middleton became an editor at ''[[Vanity Fair (UK)|Vanity Fair]]'' under [[Edgar Jepson]], where he confided to his fellow editor [[Frank Harris]] that he really wanted to make a living as a poet. Shortly afterwards, Harris published Middleton's poem "The Bathing Boy":<ref name=harris>Frank Harris (1915) ''Contemporary Portraits'', Mitchell Kennerley, New York.</ref>

{{poemquote|
I saw him standing idly on the brim
    Of the quick river, in his beauty clad,
So fair he was that Nature looked at him
        And touched him with her sunbeams here and there
        So that his cool flesh sparkled, and his hair
    Blazed like a crown above the naked lad.
 
And so I wept; I have seen lovely things,
    Maidens and stars and roses all a-nod
In moonlit seas, but Love without his wings
        Set in the azure of an August sky,
        Was all too fair for my mortality,
    And so I wept to see the little god.

Till with a sudden grace of silver skin
    And golden lock he dived, his song of joy
Broke with the bubbles as he bore them in;
        And lo, the fear of night was on that place,
        Till decked with new-found gems and flushed of face
    He rose again, a laughing, choking boy.}}

His work was also published by [[Austin Harrison]] in ''[[The English Review]]'', and he wrote book reviews for ''[[The Academy (periodical)|The Academy]]''.<ref name=savage>Henry Savage (1922) ''Richard Middleton: The Man And His Work'', Cecil Palmer, London.</ref>

Middleton suffered from severe [[major depressive disorder|depression]], then termed melancholia. He spent his last nine months in [[Brussels]], where in December 1911, at age 29, he took his life by poisoning himself with [[chloroform]], which had been prescribed as a remedy for his condition.<ref>[http://www.enotes.com/richard-middleton-essays/middleton-richard Twentieth-Century Literary Criticism, ©1995 Gale Cengage]</ref> His literary reputation was sustained by Edgar Jepson and Arthur Machen, the latter in an introduction to Middleton's collection ''[[The Ghost Ship and Other Stories]]'',<ref>[[Mark Valentine]], ''Arthur Machen''. Seren, 1995. {{ISBN|185411123X}}, (p. 79).</ref> and later by [[John Gawsworth]]. His stories appeared in several anthologies.

An encounter with Middleton is said to have persuaded the young [[Raymond Chandler]] to postpone his career as a writer. Chandler wrote, "Middleton struck me as having far more talent than I was ever likely to possess; and if he couldn't make a go of it, it wasn't very likely that I could."<ref>Raymond Chandler: ''Raymond Chandler Speaking'', Dorothy Gardiner, Kathrine Sorley Walker (ed.), p. 24, [[Houghton Mifflin|Houghton Mifflin Company]], 1962, {{ISBN|978-0-520-20835-3}}.</ref>

==Works==
*''Poems and Songs'' (1912)
*''Poems and Songs Second Series'' (1912)
*''The Day Before Yesterday'' (essays, 1912)
*''[[The Ghost Ship and Other Stories]]'' (1912) 
*''Monologues'' (1913) 
*''Queen Melanie and the Woodboy'' (novel, 1931)
*''The Pantomime Man'' (stories, 1933)
*''Richard Middleton'' (poems, 1937), [[Richards Press]]

==References==
{{Reflist|30em}}

==Sources==
*''Richard Middleton's Letters to Henry Savage'' (1929, [[Mandrake Press]]) edited by Henry Savage
*Henry Savage; [https://archive.org/details/richardmiddleton00sava/page/n7/mode/2up ''Richard Middleton: The Man And His Work''] (1922, London: Cecil Palmer)

== External links ==
*{{Gutenberg author |id=3811| name=Richard Middleton}}
*{{Internet Archive author |sname=Richard Barham Middleton}}
*{{Librivox author |id=530}}
*Stephen Wayne Foster: A Poet's Death [http://www.williamapercy.com/wiki/images/A_poet's_death.pdf Retrieved 22 October 2016.]
*{{LCAuth|nr92044982|Richard Middleton|9|ue}}

{{Authority control}}

{{DEFAULTSORT:Middleton, Richard}}
[[Category:1882 births]]
[[Category:1911 suicides]]
[[Category:1911 deaths]]
[[Category:English horror writers]]
[[Category:People educated at Cranbrook School, Kent]]
[[Category:British ghost story writers]]
[[Category:English male short story writers]]
[[Category:English male poets]]
[[Category:20th-century English poets]]
[[Category:20th-century English short story writers]]
[[Category:20th-century English male writers]]
[[Category:Suicides by poison]]
[[Category:Suicides in Belgium]]