Sir Herbert Edward Read was an English art historian, poet, literary critic and philosopher, best known for numerous books on art, which included influential volumes on the role of art in education. Read was co-founder of the Institute of Contemporary Arts.
As well as being a prominent English anarchist, he was one of the earliest English writers to take notice of existentialism . Read's first volume of poetry was Songs of Chaos, self-published in 1915.
His second collection, published in 1919, was called Naked Warriors, and drew on his experiences fighting in the trenches of the First World War. His work, which shows the influence of Imagism and of the Metaphysical poets, was mainly in free verse. He died on 12 June 1968 (aged 74) in Stonegrave, North Riding of Yorkshire, England.
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