Arthur Romney Green Biography
Arthur Romney Green (1872-1945) was a prolific writer and would have liked to devote his life to poetry, but realized that he would have to earn a living and had trained in chemistry and physics at Mason College, Birmingham. He taught in South Africa for three years, but was already making boats and furniture, and in 1900 he returned to England to set up a workshop, first at Bosham on the Sussex coast, moving in 1902 to Haslemere in Surrey. He applied the mathematical principles he had learned to his carpentry. He continued to teach in a variety of settings and in the 1930s taught woodworking skills at workshops for the unemployed organized by the Bureau for Rural Industries. He joined the Independent Labor Party and established an active branch in Haslemere. He left his family in 1909 to make his home with Bertha Murray, moving in 1919 to Christchurch, where he made furniture until his death in 1945 from head injuries suffered in a road accident. He has published numerous works of poetry and social commentary, as well as articles on woodworking and sailing. He put together an anthology of his favorite poetry, but failed to get it published during the depression of the 1930s, and also wrote an autobiography. His niece and executor, Joan Yeo-Marsh, managed to publish the poem ("A Craftsman's Anthology", Allen & Unwin 1948).
