John Freeman (1880 – 1929) was an English poet and essayist, who gave up a successful career in insurance to write full time.
He was born in London, and started as an office boy aged 13. He was a close friend of Walter de la Mare from 1907, who lobbied hard with Edward Marsh to get Freeman into the Georgian Poetry series; with eventual success. De la Mare's biographer Theresa Whistler describes him as "tall, gangling, ugly, solemn, punctilious".
He won the Hawthornden Prize in 1920 with Poems 1909-1920. His Last Hours was set to music by Ivor Gurney.
Works
- Presage of Victory (1916)
- Stone Trees (1916)
- Ancient and Modern Essays in Literary Criticism (1917)
- Memories of Childhood and other Poems (1919)
- Poems 1909-1920 (1920)
- Music (1921)
- The Grove and Other Poems (1925)
- Prince Absalom (1925)
- Collected Poems (1928)
- Last Poems (1930)
