Robert Bridges

Robert Seymour Bridges (23 October 1844 – 21 April 1930) was an English poet who was Poet Laureate from 1913 to 1930. A doctor by training, he achieved literary fame only late in life. His poems reflect a deep Christian faith, and he is the author of many well-known hymns. It was through Bridges's efforts that the poet Gerard Manley Hopkins achieved posthumous fame.

Bridges was a grandson of Sir Robert Affleck, 4th Baronet, and a stepson of the vicar John Edward Nassau Molesworth. Bridges studied medicine at St Bartholomew's Hospital, and then practised as a casualty physician at his teaching hospital. He served as a full physician to the Great Northern Central Hospital from 1876 until 1885. He retired as a physician in 1885, due to suffering from a lung disease. During the First World War, Bridges was one of the writers serving in Britain's War Propaganda Bureau at Wellington House.

Bridges was born at Walmer, Kent, in England, the son of John Thomas Bridges (died 1853) and his wife Harriett Elizabeth, daughter of the Rev. Sir Robert Affleck, 4th Baronet. He was the fourth son and eighth child. After his father's death his mother married again, in 1854, to John Edward Nassau Molesworth, vicar of Rochdale, and the family moved there.