Henry Treece

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Henry Treece (December 1911 – June 10, 1966) was a British poet and writer, who worked also as a teacher, actor, and editor. He is perhaps best remembered now as a historical novelist, with series of books both for adult readers and children. A fourth volume of poetry The Haunted Garden was published by Faber & Faber in 1947 and he appeared in the 1949 The New British Poets, an Anthology edited by Kenneth Rexroth; but from 1952 with The Dark Island he devoted himself to fiction. Representative of his children's books are the trilogy Viking's Dawn, The Road to Miklagard and Viking's Sunset. He also worked as a radio broadcaster.

He was born in Wednesbury, Staffordshire, and graduated from the University of Birmingham in 1933. He went into teaching, married, and settled in Lincolnshire. In World War II he served as an intelligence officer in the RAF.

He was also involved in the editing of poetry anthologies, The New Apocalypse (1939) with J. F. Hendry giving its name to a movement; two further anthologies with Hendry followed. He was working on a critical book about Dylan Thomas, which would have been the first such study; but they fell out when Thomas refused to sign up as a New Apocalyptic.

He edited issues of Transformation, and A New Romantic Anthology (1949) with Stefan Schimanski, issues of Kingdom Come: The Magazine of War-Time Oxford with Schimanski and Alan Rook, as well as War-Time Harvest. How I See Apocalypse (London, Lindsay Drummond, 1946) was a retrospective statement.