Martin Farquhar Tupper

About the Martin Farquhar Tupper

Martin Farquhar Tupper was an English poet and novelist. He was one of the most widely-read English-language authors of his day with the poetry collection Proverbial Philosophy, which was a bestseller in the United Kingdom and North America for several decades.

Tupper found great success in Victorian Britain at a relatively early age, with a second series of the poetry collection Proverbial Philosophy in 1842. The work’s fame later spread to the US and Canada, and it continued to be popular for several decades. The author capitalised on this success with scores of editions in various formats and tours in his homeland and in North America, and as one of Queen Victoria’s favourite poets he was once a serious contender for the position of Poet Laureate of the United Kingdom. However, Proverbial Philosophy eventually fell out of fashion, and its previous eminence made the poetry and its author popular targets for satire and parody.

Despite his prodigious output and ongoing efforts at self-promotion, Tupper’s other work did not achieve anywhere close to the bestseller status of Proverbial Philosophy, and even towards the end of the poet’s own lifetime he had become obscure. Nevertheless, the style of Proverbial Philosophyhad an influence on admirer Walt Whitman, who was also experimenting with free verse. Considered by later generations to be artefacts of their time, Tupper’s works have largely been forgotten, and as of 2002 had been out of print for over a century.