Philip James Bailey

Philip James Bailey was a 19th century English poet who belonged to the so called “Spasmodic School”, a group of writers of the Victorian era which included the likes of George Gilfillan and Ebenezer Jones. Bailey’s best known work was the epic and highly complex multi-part piece which appeared under the title Festus and which ran to over 40,000 lines in total.

He was born on 22nd April 1816 in the city of Nottingham and received a good education including being taught the classics by a Unitarian minister called BenJamin Carpenter. He also studied English poets, in particular the work of Lord Byron. His parents perhaps had ambitions that their son should become a Presbyterian minister when they sent him to Glasgow University. Bailey had other ideas though and, at the age of seventeen, he left Glasgow and travelled south to London where he commenced studies in law at the offices of a solicitor. The following year he entered Lincoln’s Inn and was called to the bar in 1840 but he never actually got to practice law. Curiously though, at the grand old age of 85, he was awarded an honorary Doctor of Laws (DLL) by the University of Glasgow.

SOURCE - https://mypoeticside.com/poets/philip-james-bailey-poems (Aug, 2025)