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Henry
Herbert
Knibbs
was
born
in
Clifton,
Ontario,
Canada
on
24
October
1874
to
his
American
parents
George
and
Sara
Knibbs
and
in
later
life
became
well
known
for
his
writing
of
western
stories,
novels,
screenplays
and
most
of
all,
for
his
poems.
I've tried to capture some of the highlights of his life, but I strongly recommend that you visit the most detailed biographical information I have seen about Henry which is contained at Cowboy.Poetry.com Simply click the image below to go there! |
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Henry's first love was for the violin which he learned to play from a very young age. He saved up his pocket money and eventually saved enough to purchase his first violin. He learned to play it secretly, keeping it hidden in a cowhide trunk in his room. Eventually his parents discovered the violin and his passion for playing it, and they encouraged him to play - although he was required to practice outside in the woodshed. This passion was to be a comfort to him in later life. His second love was for horses. He spent most of his childhood summers at the farm of his Grandmother in Pennsylvania. In his younger years he would be taken there by his mother and then when older, he would be deposited at the railway station, put onto the Erie train, and shipped there on his own. He loved to travel and dreamed of becoming a railroad conductor. He claimed his love of horses started probably the first time he ever saw one. This was almost certainly encouraged by his Pennsylvania family who were all horsemen and breeders. His grandmother too was a notable horsewoman. Henry's love and understanding of horses were all later used with remarkable skill in the creation of his poetic images. He was educated at Woodstock College, Ontario at the age of 14, and Bishop Ridley College at St. Catherine's, Ontario at the age of 15 for three years. At the age of 18 he migrated to Buffalo, New York and worked as a wholesale coal salesman in Michigan and Ontario. Other jobs in those earlier years were as a clerk for the Lehigh Valley Railroad, a two-year stint as a hobo in the Mid-West, and a stenographer in the Division Freight Office of the BRP Railway in Buffalo, New York. At the age of 34, he went to study English at Harvard for three years. He married Ida Pfeifer in 1899 but after thirty years he left her to live with Turbesé Lumis Fiske whose father was Charles Lumis, himself an editor and writer of Western stories. Henry had known him before moving West. Ida refused to divorce him and wrote to him for many years, begging him to return to her. But he never did. |
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In
1910
at
the
age
of
37,
Henry
moved
to
California
where
he
wrote
his
first
Western
novel,
Lost
Farm
Camp.
He
wrote
six
books
of
poems
and
was
the
author
of
thirteen
novels.
He
wrote
poems
and
stories
for
various
pulp
magazines
of
the
time.It
seems
that
his
writing
came
to
a
sad
end
in
1933
when
in
his
story
Pericles
Honeymoon, He returned to his first love - the violin. and spent his remaining years running the Farthing Hub Violin Shop at Banning, California. On 17 May 1945, Henry died in California from a respiratory illness from which he'd suffered most of his life. |
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Boomer
Johnson Make Me No Grave The Shallows of the Ford. Where the Ponies Come to Drink |
See several images of Henry Herberts Books |
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Copyright © 1999-2008 Don Knibbs
