Robert Nye collection

Robert Nye was born in London in 1939. His father, Oswald, was a civil servant; his mother, Frances, a farmer’s daughter who was the youngest of 21 children, was a former lady’s maid. He attended Southend High School for Boys and had published his first poem, "Kingfisher", in the London Magazine (September 1955; Volume 2, Number 9) by the age of sixteen. He left school in 1955 and did not pursue additional formal study. Nye's poetry has appeared in a number of important literary magazines, including The Atlantic Monthly, Encounter and The Listener. The 1964 Fall and Winter issues of the Canadian publication The Fiddlehead contained respectively fifteen and eighteen of his poems.

He worked as a newspaper reporter, milkman, postman, garden labourer and sanatorium orderly (in lieu of national service, as a conscientious objector).

Nye married his first wife, Judith Pratt, in 1959. In 1961 they moved to a remote cottage in north Wales, where Nye devoted himself full-time to writing. There he developed an interest in Welsh and Celtic legends, reflected later in his fiction for both adults and children. In 1967 he married Aileen Campbell.

Nye died in July 2016.

Adapted from "Robert Nye Obituary" (https://www.theguardian.com/books/2016/jul/19/robert-nye-obituary) and "Robert Nye" (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_Nye).