Biography
Jocelyn Henry Clive 'Harry' Graham (23 December 1874 - 30 October 1936) was an English writer. He was a successful journalist and later, after distinguished military service, a leading lyricist for operettas and musical comedies, but he is now best remembered as a writer of humorous verse in the tradition of grotesquerie and black humour exemplified by the verses of W. S. Gilbert and Hilaire Belloc.
Graham is best remembered for his series of cheerfully cruel Ruthless Rhymes, first published in 1898 under the pseudonym Col. D. Streamer, a reference to his regiment. These were described by The Times, in an editorial that compared him to Edward Lear, Lewis Carroll and W. S. Gilbert, as "that enchanted world where there are no values nor standards of conduct or feeling, and where the plainest sense is the plainest nonsense".The Oxford Dictionary of National Biography also compares his verse with that of W. S. Gilbert and suggests that his prose was an early influence on P. G. Wodehouse. Graham's other light verse exhibited a delight in language, and not only his native one, as in his response to the news that Wilhelm II, visiting Brussels, spoke at length with Baron de Haulleville, Director of the Congo Museum, in French, German and English. ..
