Educated at Harrow and Balliol College, Oxford, Calverley was a gifted poet and maintained a high academic standing. However, he was also prone to bouts of drunkenness and in 1852 was sent down for disciplinary offenses. In October 1852, he changed his name to Calverley, to evade any disgrace that had followed him from Oxford, and entered Christ's College, Cambridge. In 1854, he won the Craven scholarship and received his MA in 1856. Already known for his humourous and satirical verse among fellow students and faculty, Calverley published Verses and Translations in 1862, which became extremely popular. In 1863, he resigned his fellowship at Cambridge in order to study law and in 1865 was called to the bar at Inner Temple. Before he could begin practicing law, he was involved in a skating accident where he incurred a severe concussion that would seriously impair his future work. He abandoned law in order to write and in 1869, published Theocritus Translated Into English Verse, a scholarly work which received critical praise. In 1872, he published Fly Leaves, another collection of satirical verse that was very successful. Suffering from depression and Bright's disease, Calverley died at his London home in 1884. His Complete Works was published the following year. |
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