Rupert Chawner Brooke (middle name sometimes given as Chaucer)(3 August 1887–23 April 1915) was an English poet known for his idealistic war sonnets written during the First World War (especially The Soldier); however, he never experienced combat at first hand. He was also known for his boyish good looks, which prompted the Irish poet William Butler Yeats to describe him as \"the handsomest young man in England\".
Brooke suffered from a severe emotional crisis in 1913, some say caused by sexual confusion and jealousy, resulting in the breakdown of his long relationship with Ka Cox (Katherine Laird Cox). Intrigue by both Virginia Woolf and Lytton Strachey is said[citation needed] to have played a part in Brooke\'s nervous collapse and subsequent rehabilitation trips to Germany.
As part of his recuperation Brooke toured the United States and Canada to write travel diaries for the Westminster Gazette. He took the long way home, sailing across the Pacific and staying some months in the South Seas. Much later it was revealed that he may have fathered a daughter with a Tahitian woman (Taatamata) with whom he seems to have enjoyed his most complete emotional relationship[citation needed]. Brooke fell heavily in love several times, with men and women, although his bisexuality was edited out of his life by his first literary executor. Many more people were in love with him. Brooke was romantically involved with the actress Cathleen Nesbitt and was once engaged to Noel Olivier, whom he met while she was a 15-year-old at the progressive Bedales School.
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