Thomas Rice Henn

Thomas Rice Henn (1901–1974) was an Irish literary critic.

Life

Henn was born in Albert House, County Sligo, Ireland and educated in Fermoy and later at Aldenham School before gaining an Exhibition at St. Catharine's College, Cambridge, where he was elected Fellow in 1926. He was Senior Tutor, 1945–47, and President, 1951–61.

He served in the British army in the Second World War, rising to the rank of Brigadier. He served from 1963 to 1968 as Chairman of the Central Organisation of Military Education Committees of the Universities and University Colleges, what is now the Council of Military Education Committees of the Universities of the United Kingdom (COMEC). The Lonely Tower (1950) was a study of W. B. Yeats; he edited J. M. Synge in 1963, and embarked on the Coole edition of Lady Gregory with Colin Smythe towards the end of his life.

He supervised the Ph. D thesis of Harivansh Rai Bachchan on W. B. Yeats.

Works

Henn's works were:

• Longinus And English Criticism (1934)
• Field Sports In Shakespeare (1934)
• The Lonely Tower: Studies in the Poetry of W. B. Yeats (1950)
• Practical Fly-Tying (1950)
• The Apple and the Spectroscope: Being lectures on poetry designed (in the main) for science students (1951/1963)
• The Harvest Of Tragedy [n|1956]
• Selected Poems (1958)
• Science In Writing (1960)
• Passages For Divine Reading (1963)
• The Plays And Poems Of J.M. Synge (1963) editor
• Shooting a Bat and other poems (1964)
• W.B. Yeats and the Poetry of War (1965) Warton Lecture
• Kipling (1967)
• The Bible as Literature (1970)
• The Living Image: Shakespeare Essays (1972)
• Last Essays: Mainly on Anglo-Irish Literature (1976)
• Introduction to George Moore's The Untilled Field (1976)
• Five Arches: A Sketch for an Autobiography and Poems (1980)