H. H. Abbott

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Harold Henry Abbott (20 June 1891 – 4 January 1976) was an English schoolteacher and a poet who wrote under the name H. H. Abbott. In the last fifteen years of his career he was headmaster of grammar schools. He published two volumes of Georgian-style verse in the 1920s that celebrate the Essex countryside and its rural people. Today, his poetry is less well known.

Family and education
- He was the son of a butcher and the brother of poet and scholar Claude Colleer Abbott.
- He went to King Edward VI Grammar School in Chelmsford and studied English and French literature at the University of London.
- He taught at several schools, including the King’s School, Gloucester; Falmouth Grammar; Royal Grammar Worcester; and Hymers College, Hull (where he was second master from 1925 to 1935).

Career as a headmaster and lecturer
- Abbott was headmaster of Beaminster Grammar School (1936–1938) and then Hutton Grammar School (1938–1951).
- He also taught as an extramural lecturer at University College, Hull.

Poetry and publishing
- He was among the poets launched by Harold Monro and The Poetry Bookshop in London.
- His first collection, Black & White (1922), included ten poems that had appeared in The Chapbook; one poem, the title piece, appeared in a 1920 Harrap anthology.
- His second collection, An Essex Harvest, and other poems (1925), was published by Chatto & Windus. Some poems had appeared in the New Statesman (1922–25) and in another Harrap anthology.
- Abbott’s Essex poems focus on farming life, local places around Chelmsford, and nature, often in traditional forms and a conversational tone. His long poem An Essex Harvest is a kind of English Georgic.
- His third volume, The Riddles of the Exeter Book (1968), collected his verse translations of Anglo-Saxon riddles; sixteen of these had appeared in his 1925 volume.

Personal life and death
- In 1929 he married Kathleen Joan Hart, and they had three children.
- Harold H. Abbott died in Broadstairs, Kent, in 1976.