Basil King

William Benjamin Basil King (1859–1928) was a Canadian-born clergyman who became a writer after retiring from the clergy. His novels and non-fiction were spiritually oriented.

Life and career

He was born on February 26, 1859, in Charlottetown, Prince Edward Island. He was graduated from the University of King's College in Nova Scotia, and served as an Anglican rector at St. Luke's Pro-Cathedral in Halifax, Nova Scotia, and later at Christ Church in Cambridge, Massachusetts.

King began writing in 1900 after he was forced to retire from the clergy due to loss of eyesight and thyroid disease. His anonymously published novel The Inner Shrine, about a French Irish girl whose husband is killed in a duel, became very popular when published in 1909. King subsequently published a number of best-selling works.

King's spiritual orientation increased later in his life. His The Abolishing of Death (1919) described the transmission of messages from a deceased chemist. The Conquest of Fear (1921) portrayed his own struggle with ill health and eventual spiritual growth, and lays out his somewhat mystical approach to religious understanding. Critics often faulted King's fiction for its sentimentality and didacticism.

Basil King (painter and poet)

Basil King (born May 30, 1935) is an American painter and writer, associated with Black Mountain College, where he was a student as a teenager.

Biography and education

Born Basil Herschel Cohen in London in 1935, he came to the United States with his parents in 1947, at which time the family name was changed from Cohen to King.

In 1951,at the age of 16, King was admitted to Black Mountain College, where he studied with Esteban Vicente, Joseph Fiore, Charles Olson, Robert Duncan and Robert Creeley, among others. From 1960-1964 King worked as a studio assistant for Adolph Gottlieb, Mark Rothko, and Barnett Newman in New York City.

Since 1959, he has lived in New York, and since 1968 in Brooklyn, where he paints, writes, and works collaboratively with poets providing art for small press publications.

Literary Work

Learning to Draw, A History

Throughout his career, King has been at work on a epic-length hybrid poetry/prose work entitled Learning To Draw/A History. This work merges autobiographical history and anecdotes with sections on figures from literary and art history important to King's development as an artist. Sections of the work have been published in except by various publishers in both chapbook and perfect-bound form.