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William Ernest Henley was born in 1849 in Gloucester, England. The eldest of six children, Henley had early access to the world of letters through his father, who was a bookseller. Yet from a young age he also suffered from tubercular arthritis, a rare condition that causes chronic inflammation of the joints. As a teenager he had one of his legs amputated below the knee. Several years later, with his remaining foot under threat, he underwent an experimental surgery that prevented the need for amputation. It was as he lay in the hospital infirmary recovering from this surgery that he penned the poem “Invictus.” Though this is by far the most famous poem Henley wrote, he did compose a large body of verse during his lifetime. He also worked as a journalist and editor. It was largely through his labors as a magazine editor that he met and befriended contemporary writers such as Rudyard Kipling and Robert Louis Stevenson, the latter of whom likely used Henley as a model for Long John Silver, the famous peg-legged pirate from his beloved 1883 novel Treasure Island. Henley died in 1903, after a fall from a train car caused a fatal resurgence of his chronic illness.

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