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The Clerihews in Poets Biography & Poetry Resource Directory

Edmund Clerihew Bentley 18751956 is remembered mainly for his classic detective story Trents Last Case and for the humorous verse form that was named after him the clerihew. It was at the age of sixteen, while he was at St. Pauls School in London, that Bentley first started writing clerihews, as a diversion from school work. G. K. Chesterton, Bentleys lifelong friend, was at St. Pauls at the same time, and he too wrote clerihews. Bentleys first collection of verse in this vein was published in 1905 as Biography For Beginners. Further collections appeared in 1929 and in 1939. It was soon after publication of the first volume that the name CLERIHEW became applied to this particular form of light verse. What exactly is a clerihew? Frances Stillman in The Poets Manual and Rhyming Dictionary defines it as a humorous pseudobiographical quatrain, rhymed as two couplets, with line of uneven length more or less in the rhythm of prose. Add to this, that the name of the subject usually ends the first or, less often, the second line, and that the humour of the clerihew is whimsical rather than satiric, and there you have a complete definition. Here is a brief selection of my favourite Bentley clerihews:

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