Salt Water Ballads was published in England in 1902. Several years' strenuous apprenticeship in literary London had preceded its appearance. The book won him his first recognition. Its unusual quality was praised by leading writers, particularly among the modernist group.
A summer in Devonshire with William Butler Yeats gave him encouragement and inspiration. Soon he was publishing verse and plays that brought him into favor. In 1903 he married Constance de la Cherois-Crommelin.
His first book of prose, A Mainsail Haul, appeared in 1905. This, is a collection of dramatic tales of ships and sailors and strange superstitions. "Roistering, reckless rogues swagger in picturesque procession across the pages of John Masefield's A Mainsail Haul.
Incorporated in these tales is everything of fear and fascination that men have found in the sea since the sailing of ships began," wrote the reviewer in the Toledo Blade when the book was reissued in 1925. In the same year was published his Sea Life in Nelsons Time, an historical account of the rigorous days in the British Navy during the latter years of Nelson's career. Fascinating illustrations picturing the ships of the
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