While pursuing a political and administrative life in colonial New Zealand Alfred Domett nurtured an ambition to achieve immortality through literature. Premier of the faction-riven colony for fourteen months and founder of its General Assembly library, after thirty years he returned to England where the epic culmination of his quiet dedication to poetry,
Ranolf and Amohia, was published.
Alfred Domett was born in Surrey, England, on 20 May, 1811. A naval officer’s son, he published two books of poems by the age of twenty-nine, left Cambridge University without a degree and for several years travelled aimlessly in Europe, North America and the West Indies. In 1841 he was called to the Bar but remembered what he had loved about his experience in Canada, “…to have known again what it
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Citation: Jones, Jenny Robin. "Alfred Domett". The Literary Encyclopedia. First published 20 December 2004 [https://www.litencyc.com/php/speople.php?rec=true&UID=1284, accessed 21 November 2024.]
