Henley , William Ernest , 1849-1903 , writer

William Ernest Henley was born in Gloucester in 1849. He was educated at the Crypt School there, where the poet T E Brown was his headmaster. He left school in 1867 and moved to London, where he worked as a journalist. He was often in ill-health and spent nearly two years in hospital in Edinburgh, where he met both Hannah Johnson Boyle, whom he married in 1878, and the writer Robert Louis Stevenson, who became a close friend and collaborator for several years. Henley spent most of his life working as a writer and editing periodicals, including the National Observer, and the New Review. He was also a poet of some note, perhaps best known for the line 'I am the master of my fate: I am the captain of my soul'.