1911 Encyclopædia Britannica/Noel, Roden Berkeley Wriothesley

NOEL, RODEN BERKELEY WRIOTHESLEY (1834–1894), English poet, son of Noel, Lord Barham, afterwards earl of Gainsborough, was born on the 27th of August 1834. He was educated at Trinity College, Cambridge, where he graduated M.A. in 1858. He then spent two years travelling in the East. He married in 1863 Alice de Broë, daughter of the director of the Ottoman Bank in Beirout. The third child of this marriage, Eric, who died at the age of five, is commemorated in Roden Noel’s best-known book of verse, A Little Child’s Monument (1881). His other volumes are Behind the Veil, and other Poems (1863), not included in his collected works, Beatrice, and other Poems (1868), The Red Flag (1872), Livingstone in Africa (1874), Songs of the Heights and Deeps (1885), A Modern Faust, and other Poems (1888), Poor People’s Christmas (1890) and My Sea, and other Poems (1896). Roden Noel’s versification was unequal and sometimes harsh, but he has a genuine feeling for nature, and the work is permeated by philosophic thought. The latter part of his life was spent at Brighton, but he died at Mainz, on the 26th of May 1894. His other works include a drama in verse, The House of Ravensburg (1877), a Life of Byron (1890, “Great Writers” series), a selection of Thomas Otway’s plays (1888) for the “Mermaid” series, and critical papers on literature and philosophy.

His Collected Poems were edited (1902) by his sister, Victoria Buxton, with a notice by J. Addington Symonds, which had originally appeared in the Academy (19th of jan. 1899) as a review of The Modern Faust. The selection (1892) in the series of Canterbury Poets has an introduction by Robert Buchanan.