Born November 5, 1884, in London, James Elroy Flecker received his education at Uppingham and Trinity College, Oxford. He joined the Consular Service in 1908, was posted to Constantinople in 1910, and he married Helle Skiadaressi, a Greek. From 1911 to 1913 Flecker served as vice-consul at Beirut. Suffering from tuberculosis, he moved to Switzerland where he died January 3, 1915. Influenced both by his classical education and by his experiences in the Orient, he published five books of poetry, The Bridge of Fire (1908), Thirty-six Poems (1910), Forty-two Poems (1911), The Golden Journey to Samarkand (1913), and The Old Ships (1915). He also brought out a novel, The King of Alsander (1914), and two sucessful plays of his, Hassan (1922) and Don Juan (1925), came out posthumously. The photograph of Flecker, taken in 1912 outside his house in Lebanon, comes from Geraldine Hodgson's The Life of James Elroy Flecker from Letters and Materials Provided by his Mother (Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1925): frontispiece (PR 6011 L4Z69 Robarts Library).