1922 Encyclopædia Britannica/Trench, Frederick Herbert

Trench, Frederick Herbert (1865–⁠), British poet and playwright, was born at Avoncore, co. Cork, Nov. 12 1865. Educated at Haileybury and Keble College, Oxford, he was elected a fellow of All Souls’ College, and in 1891, after some years spent in travelling, was appointed an examiner in the Board of Education. This appointment he gave up in 1908 in order to devote himself to literary work. In 1908 he also became director of the Haymarket theatre, London, and during a short tenure of this position he staged King Lear and Maeterlinck’s Blue Bird . During the World War he worked in Florence for the establishment of a better understanding between Great Britain and Italy. From his school days he had been a writer of verse, and his first volume of poems, Deirdre Wedded, appeared in 1901. It was followed by further poems, notably “Apollo and the Seaman,” included in New Poems (1907), and Lyrics and Narrative Poems (1911). Among his later publications were an Ode from Italy in Time of War (1915); Poems with Fables in Prose (1917); and a poetic play Napoleon (1918), which was produced in London by the Stage Society in 1919.