Philip James Bailey is best, if not solely, remembered as the author of Festus (1839). He became so identified with the poem that he was popularly referred to as "Festus" Bailey; and because Festus influenced several poets of the next generation, Bailey was accused of fathering the "Spasmodic School of Poetry."

Bailey was born in Nottingham, where he spent much of his life. He was the only son of Thomas Bailey, a jack-of-all-trades, and Mary Taylor Bailey. Thomas began in business as a silkhosier, ran unsuccessfully for Parliament, was a member of the Nottingham town council from 1836 to 1843, and in 1845 became the proprietor and editor of the Nottingham Mercury. He was a liberal, writing on political revolutions and the rights of labor, but his greatest loves seem to have been his topographical and poetical endeavors. The latter--volumes of speculative poems such as What is Life? and Other Poems (1820) and...