Editing Rupert Brooke (section)

==Life and career==

Brooke made friends among the [[Bloomsbury group]] of writers, some of whom admired his talent while others were more impressed by his good looks. He also belonged to another literary group known as the [[Georgian poets|Georgian Poets]] and was one of the most important of the [[Dymock poets]], associated with the [[Gloucestershire]] village of [[Dymock]] where he spent some time before the war. This group included both [[Robert Frost]] and [[Edward Thomas (poet)|Edward Thomas]]. He also lived at the [[Old Vicarage, Grantchester|Old Vicarage]], [[Grantchester]], which stimulated one of his best-known poems, [[The Old Vicarage, Grantchester|named after the house]], written with homesickness while in Berlin in 1912. While travelling in Europe, he prepared a thesis, entitled "[[John Webster]] and the [[English Renaissance theatre|Elizabethan Drama]]", which earned him a fellowship at [[King's College, Cambridge]], in March 1913.

Brooke had his first [[Heterosexuality|heterosexual]] relationship with [[Élisabeth van Rysselberghe]], daughter of painter [[Théo van Rysselberghe]].<ref>{{cite book |last1=Jones |first1=Nigel |title=Rupert Brooke - Life, Death and Myth |date=2014 |publisher=Head of Zeus |isbn=9781781857151 |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=LjcQBQAAQBAJ |access-date=5 January 2022}}</ref> They met in 1911 in [[Munich]].<ref>{{cite book |last1=Caesar |first1=Adrian |title=Taking it Like a Man - Suffering, Sexuality, and the War Poets : Brooke, Sassoon, Owen, Graves |date=1993 |publisher=Manchester University Press |isbn=9780719038341 |page=37 |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=mXu7AAAAIAAJ |access-date=5 January 2022}}</ref> His affair with Élisabeth came closest to be consummated than any other he ever had so far.<ref name=mundi>{{cite book |last1=Dyserinck |first1=Hugo |title=Europa Provincia Mundi: Essays in Comparative Literature and European Studies Offered to Hugo Dyserinck on the Occasion of His Sixty-fifth Birthday |date=1992 |publisher=Rodopi |isbn=9789051833812 |page=180 |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=uvdPzUXNhLIC |access-date=5 January 2022}}</ref> It is possible that the two became lovers in a "complete sense" in May 1913 in [[Swanley]].<ref name=:0>{{cite book |last1=Delany |first1=Paul |title=Fatal Glamour - The Life of Rupert Brooke |date=2015 |publisher=McGill-Queen's University Press |isbn=9780773582781 |pages=122–338 |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=YUbkBgAAQBAJ |access-date=4 January 2022}}</ref> It was in Munich, where he had met Élisabeth, that a year later he finally succeeded in having intercourse with [[Katherine Laird Cox]].<ref name=mundi/>

Brooke suffered a severe emotional crisis in 1912, resulting in the breakdown of his long relationship with Ka Cox.<ref>{{cite ODNB |url=http://www.oxforddnb.com/view/article/32093?docPos=1 |title=Brooke, Rupert Chawner (1887–1915) |first=Adrian |last=Caesar |year=2004 |doi=10.1093/ref:odnb/32093 |access-date=12 January 2008}}</ref> Brooke's paranoia that [[Lytton Strachey]] had schemed to destroy his relationship with Cox by encouraging her to see [[Henry Lamb]] precipitated his break with his Bloomsbury group friends and played a part in his [[nervous breakdown|nervous collapse]] and subsequent rehabilitation trips to Germany.<ref>Keith Hale, ed. ''Friends and Apostles: The Correspondence of Rupert Brooke-James Strachey, 1905–1914''.</ref>
[[File:Rupert brooke officer 1914.jpg|thumb|Rupert Brooke as an officer in 1914]]
As part of his recuperation, Brooke toured the United States and Canada to write travel diaries for ''[[The Westminster Gazette]]''. He took the long way home, sailing across the Pacific and staying some months in the [[South Sea Islands|South Seas]]. Much later it was revealed that he may have fathered a daughter with a Tahitian woman named Taatamata with whom he seems to have enjoyed his most complete emotional relationship.<ref>Mike Read: ''Forever England'' (1997)</ref><ref name="Potter">{{cite web|last1=Potter|first1=Caroline|title=This Side of Paradise: Rupert Brooke and the South Seas|url=http://asketchofthepast.com/2014/08/08/this-side-of-paradise-rupert-brooke-and-the-south-seas/|website=asketchofthepast.com|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20150210171436/http://asketchofthepast.com/2014/08/08/this-side-of-paradise-rupert-brooke-and-the-south-seas/|archive-date=10 February 2015|url-status=live|date=8 August 2014}}</ref> Many more people were in love with him.<ref>Biography at [http://www.glbtq.com/literature/brooke_r.html GLBTQ encyclopaedia] {{webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20080515160818/http://www.glbtq.com/literature/brooke_r.html |date=15 May 2008 }} by Keith Hale, editor of ''Friends and Apostles: The Correspondence of Rupert Brooke-James Strachey, 1905–1914''</ref> Brooke was romantically involved with the artist [[Phyllis Gardner (British writer)|Phyllis Gardner]] and the actress [[Cathleen Nesbitt]], and was once engaged to [[Noël Olivier]], whom he met, when she was aged 15, at the progressive [[Bedales School]].

Brooke's accomplished poetry gained many enthusiasts and followers, and he was taken up by [[Edward Marsh (polymath)|Edward Marsh]], who brought him to the attention of [[Winston Churchill]], then [[First Lord of the Admiralty]]. He joined the [[Royal Navy]] after the outbreak of war in August 1914, and was commissioned into the [[Royal Naval Reserve|Royal Naval Volunteer Reserve]] as a temporary [[sub-lieutenant]] shortly after his 27th birthday.<ref>{{London Gazette|issue=28906|page=7396|date=18 September 1914}}</ref> Brooke was assigned to the [[63rd (Royal Naval) Division|Royal Naval Division]], an infantry division consisting of Royal Navy and [[Royal Marines|Royal Marine]] personnel not needed at sea, and took part in the [[Siege of Antwerp (1914)|siege of Antwerp]] in early October.<ref>{{cite web |url=https://www.nationalarchives.gov.uk/help-with-your-research/research-guides/royal-naval-division-service-records-1914-1919/|title= Royal Naval Division service records 1914-1919|publisher=The National Archives|access-date=30 December 2023}}</ref>

Brooke came to public attention as a war poet early the following year, when ''[[The Times Literary Supplement]]'' published two sonnets ("IV: The Dead" and "V: The Soldier") on 11 March; the latter was then read from the pulpit of [[St Paul's Cathedral]] on Easter Sunday (4 April).  His most famous collection of poetry, containing all five sonnets, ''1914 & Other Poems'', was first published in May 1915 and, in testament to his popularity, ran to 11 further impressions that year and by June 1918 had reached its 24th impression,<ref>''1914 & Other Poems'' by Rupert Brooke, Sidgwick & Jackson, 1918 (24th impression).</ref> a process undoubtedly fuelled through posthumous interest.