General Studies

Aiken, Conrad.  Scepticisms:  Notes on Contemporary Poetry.  New York:  Knopf, 1919.

Discusses de la Mare's poem "Motley" in terms of the imaginative poem and realist poem.  Discuses de la Mare's Peacock Pie as some of the best children's poetry ever written.

Briggs, Julia.  Night Visitors: The Rise and Fall of the English Ghost Story. London: Faber, 1977.

An excellent study of the ghost stories that notes the influence of Henry James.  De la Mare presents "brilliantly illuminated fragments of experience.  His imaginative world is essentially subjective, an intensifying gaze focused on a sequence of curious, perhaps inexplicable events."  Concludes that de la Mare's ghost stories ask questions about the meaning of life and death, a question later taken up by Robert Aickman in the 1960's and 1970's.

Cavaliero, Glen. The Supernatural and English Fiction.  Oxford:  Oxford University Press, 1995.

A good study of the dozen or so stories described as ghost stories.  Regards the novel The Return as de la Mare's greatest achievement in this vein. Notes "as a writer of ghostly tales he is among the masters of the craft, unmatched in his ability to evoke the twilight territory of psychic borderlands."

Cecil, David.  The English Poets. London: Collins, 1942.

Child, Harold.  Essays and Reflections.  London, 1948.

Church, Richard.  British Authors. New York: Longmans, Green, 1948.

Colavito, Jason.  Knowing Fear: Science, Knowledge and the Development of the Horror Genre.  Jefferson, NC: McFarland, 2008.

A single paragraph is devoted to The Return that discusses it in the light of Spiritualism.

Cunliffe, J.W.  English Literature in the Twentieth Century.  New York: Macmillan, 1933.

In a chapter on the Georgian poets, de la Mare figures.  Remarks that his superb children's poetry can be appreciated by adults as well.  Says that the famous poem "The Listeners" is a children's poem for adults.

Danielson, Henry.  Bibliographies of Modern Authors.  London:  Bookman's Journal, 1921.

Forster, E.M.  The Development of English Prose Between 1918 and 1939.  Glasgow: Jackson, 1945.

Freeman, John.  English Portraits and Essays.  London: Hodder and Stoughton, 1924.

Haviland, Virginia.  Children and Literature:  Views and Reviews.  New York:  Lothrop, Lee and Shepard, 1974.

Howarth, Peter.  British Poetry in the Age of Modernism.  Cambridge:  Cambridge University Press, 2005.

An entire chapter is devoted to de la Mare's ideas about the reading of poetry.  Howarth compares the view of Eliot's essay "Tradition and the Individual Talent" to some of de la Mare's essays, and on a second look, they are similar.  "This fascination with the experience of absence and vacancy is central to de la Mare's outlook, with its abiding interest in ghosts, graves, and silences." Thus, one must experience the poem to understand it.  One does not need to know about the life of the poet.  The poem gives the greatest look at him.

Jarrell, Randall.  Poetry and the Age.  Gainesville: University Press of Florida, 2001.

Jones, Llewellyn.  First Impressions:  Essays on Poetry, Criticism, and Prosody.  Freeport, NY: Books for Libraries Press, 1968.

Kendon, Frank.  The Small Years.  Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1930.

Kernahan, Coulson.  Five More Famous Living Poets.  London: T. Butterworth, 1936.

Lucas, F.L.  The Decline and Fall of the Romantic Ideal.  New York: Macmillan, 1936.

Megroz, R.L.  The Dream World. New York: E.P. Dutton, 1939.

Muir, Edward.  The Present Age from 1914.  London, 1939.

Navarette, Susan J.  The Shape of Fear:  Horror and the Fin de Siecle Culture of Decadence.  Lexington, KY: University Press of Kentucky, 1998.

A chapter is devoted to de la Mare's early tale "A: B: O".  The tale is "valuable both as a text and as a document disclosing not merely anxieties and horrors, but also the distinctive mentalite of an age, expressing itself in questions and concerns voiced by an apprentice writer who saw himself as a witness to both the death of one culture and the birth of its successor."

Penzoldt, Peter.  The Supernatural in Fiction.  New York:  Humanities Press, 1965.

A chapter on de la Mare famous for its assertion that de la Mare wrote tales that were "inconclusive."  Compares this to the work of Henry James, arguing that, like James, de la Mare is a leading exponent of the psychological ghost story.

Perkins, David.  A History of Modern Poetry: from the 1890's to the High Modernist Mode.  Cambridge:  The Belknap Press of the Harvard University Press, 1976.

An excellent evaluation of de la Mare in the context of the poetry of his day. Remarks that de la Mare uses the trappings of Romantic poetry to convey a peculiarly twentieth century stance.  It is as if he is writing like the Romantics after the fact.  Regards de la Mare more closely as a Symbolist poet.  Says that de la Mare has written the best poetry for children in the twentieth century.

Pinto, Vivian de Sola.  Crisis in English Poetry, 1880-1940.  London:  Hutchinson University Library, 1951.

Compares de la Mare to Chesterton and finds that de la Mare's children's poetry is his most important contribution.  Pinto regards the later general poetry as a failure because there is too much interest in the musical quality to the detriment of high seriousness that one finds in Yeats.

Priestley, J. B. Figures in Modern Literature.  New York:  Dodd, Mead, 1924.

Punter, David.  The Literature of Terror: A History of Gothic Fictions from 1765 to the Present Day.  London: Longman, 1980.

An excellent discussion of de la Mare's ghost stories, which Punter compares to Henry James. He regards both writers as Gothic in that, like earlier Gothic fiction there is a friction between the real and the spectral.  Argues that de la Mare's characters attempt to place order on the darkness by writing ambiguous narratives in an attempt to make sense of things but that, ironically, do not fend off the darkness.

Richards, I.A.  Poetries and Sciences:  A Reissue of Science and Poetry (1926, 1935) with Commentary.  New York: W.W. Norton, 1970.

Points out that de la Mare is not concerned with the things of reality, only in "phantasy."

Sullivan, Jack.  Elegant Nightmares:  The English Ghost Story from Le Fanu to Blackwood.  Athens: Ohio University Press, 1978.

In discussing ghost story writers influenced by M.R. James, Sullivan says that the influence of Poe and Hawthorne in de la Mare's "A.B.O." is more pronounced than James.

Swinnerton, Frank.  The Georgian Scene: A Literary Panorama.    Murray Hill, New York:  Farrar and Rinehart, 1934.

A lengthy study of early twentieth century English literature that devotes three pages to de la Mare.  Notes that "sure enough through much of de la Mare's work there passes the air of deserted houses, forgotten ghosts and the chilling melancholy of tombs and dread."

Wagenknecht, Edward.  Cavalcade of the English Novel.  New York: Henry Holt, 1943.

A study of selected novelists since the Renaissance, that concludes with de la Mare.  Studies the novels, especially The Return and the short stories, always noting de la Mare's mysticism, and his belief in the primacy of the imagination.

Walsh, William.  The Use of Imagination:  Educational Thought and the Literary Mind.  New York:  Barnes and Noble, 1959.

Assets that de la Mare is a minor writer, but studies his children's poetry as unique.  He concludes, "beneath the murmur of childish voices we hear a more ancient and wiser tongue, the language of myth and fairytale, dream and symbol."