Educated at Trinity College, Toronto (now the University of Toronto), Lampman graduated with honours in classics in 1882. After a short period of teaching at Orangeville High School, he took a low-paying clerk position at the Post-Office Department in Ottawa. Lampman had been an active contributor to the college magazine, Rouge et Noir and from 1882 had begun to contribute his poems to literary magazines. In 1888, with the financial help of his wife, Maud, he published Among the Millet, and Other Poems. It was a critical success and established Lampman as one of the finest English Canadian poets of his time. With his close friend, the poet Duncan Campbell Scott, and W.W. Campbell, Lampman wrote a weekly column called At The Mermaid Inn, for the Globe during 1892 and 1893. In 1895, he was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society of Canada. That year he also published his second volume of poems, Lyrics of Earth, but this wasn't nearly as successful as its predecessor. He was working on the proofs of his third volume, Alcyone, when he died suddenly. Lampman had contracted rheumatic fever when he was aged seven and it is thought that this contributed to his early demise at only 37. Lampman's only other major work was Fairy Tales (1885). |
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