Update on C. Fox Smith Anthology Project (December 30, 2006)

This update is for people like yourself that we believe have an interest in the works of Cicely Fox Smith. For the past three years Jim Saville (UK) and myself (US) have been trying to collect all the poems by this lady. Almost all of her works are now long out of print and are becoming very difficult or expensive to obtain. We are trying to make them all freely available to a wider audience via the internet on the Oldpoetry Website: Click here for website

To date we have posted over 450 of her poems there, complete with references and notes. Anyone can access the poems for free via the above link. To give us an indication of the merits of the work done so far it would be nice to see more feedback on the poems. This is easy to do by the built-in comment section at the end of each poem at Oldpoetry.

There are about 50 more known poems remaining to be posted and these are from her earliest book, Poems Of Greater Britain. That book is in hand and the job of posting these poems will be accomplished soon. We have access to all her major poetry books via our personal collections but there are a few miscellaneous poems which were published in periodicals but were not republished in one of her poetry books. We are searching online sources such as copies of PUNCH magazine via the Gutenberg Website. However, we are also aware of many different periodicals and numerous travelogues, naval histories and anthologies that likely contain examples of her work and would like to obtain copies of any poems included in these if possible. Your help in this job would be greatly appreciated and we can be contacted at ipbar@gwi.net or shantyfreak@yahoo.co.uk or via the comments section on the Oldpoetry Website

Ultimately we would like to get all these poems published as an anthology so that more people can better access and appreciate her work. The Oldpoetry Website does that job well for now but like most websites it is not necessarily permanent. Both Jim and I have independent back-ups of what is posted there now but that will not be of much use to fans of her work around this wide world if the Website fails.

We would also like to be kept up to date with regard to any other C. Fox Smith projects that you may be working on or are familiar with. We also draw your attention to this poet's forthcoming 125th anniversary, February 1st of this year, and encourage you to celebrate it appropriately.

When we are aware of it, we have also made reference in the poems posted at Oldpoetry to recordings where her poems have been adapted for singing; our references to recordings, however, will be unavoidably incomplete. If there are mistakes that you notice, please draw our attention to them via personal e-mail or the Website comments section. We will be happy to correct any factual errors on the site.


Charlie Ipcar (Charley Noble)

Jim Saville (Shantyfreak)

SOURCES


Songs Of Greater Britain (1899)

The Foremost Trail (1899)

Men Of Men (1900)

Wings Of The Morning (1904)

Lancashire Hunting Songs And Other Moorland Lays (1909)

Sailor Town (1914)

Songs In Sail (1914)

Small Craft (1917)

Rhymes Of The Red Ensign (1919)

Songs And Chanties: 1914-1916 (1919)

Ships And Folks (1920)

Rovings (1921)

Sea Songs And Ballads: 1917-1922 (1923)

Full Sail (1926)

Sailor's Delight (1931)

All The Other Children (1933)

Other Books, Magazines, and Manuscript