James Elroy Flecker is a minor writer. He is most frequently regarded as a Georgian poet, more for chronological reasons, however, than for the style and substance of his poetry, which seems to owe more to the late nineteenth-century Parnassian movement in France than to the native tradition. Besides writing poetry, Flecker also wrote a novel and some essays, an Italian grammar book, and two dramas, Don Juan and Hassan, which brought him considerable posthumous fame.

Herman Elroy Flecker was born in Lewisham, South London, to the Rev. Dr. William Herman Flecker and Sarah Ducat Flecker. Two years later the poet's father became headmaster of Dean Close School in Cheltenham, which remained Flecker's real home throughout his short life. Flecker attended Dean Close School from 1893 until 1901, when he entered Uppingham School, where he distinguished himself as a brilliant but erratic student. He consolidated this reputation at Trinity College...