Cecil Day-Lewis (or Day Lewis) (27th April 1904-22nd May 1972) was a British poet. Born in Ireland (at Ballintubber, County Laois), he was educated at Wadham College, Oxford, where he made the acquaintance of W. H. Auden.

After working as a school-teacher for some years, he eventually became a full-time writer, supplementing his poetry income by writing crime novels. His twenty novels of mystery and detection, published under the pseudonym Nicholas Blake, include the classic whodunnits Thou Shell of Death (1935) and The Beast Must Die (1938).

During the Second World War he worked as a publications editor in the Ministry of Information. After the war, he joined publisher Chatto & Windus as a director and senior editor. He later taught poetry at Oxford University (where he was Professor of Poetry) and other universities.

He lived with his second wife, the actress Jill Balcon, in Croom's Hill, Greenwich, London.

In 1968, Day-Lewis was appointed Poet Laureate, a position he held until his death four years later. He was buried in Stinsford churchyard, Dorset, near the grave of Thomas Hardy.

He had three children. Out of his first marriage came a son, TV critic and writer Sean Day-Lewis, who wrote a biography of his father (C. Day Lewis: An English Literary Life) published in 1980. From his second marriage came Academy Award winning actor, Daniel Day-Lewis and journalist Tamasin Day-Lewis.

A New Anthology of Modern Verse 1920-1940 (1941)

Edited by Day-Lewis and L. A. G. Strong. Poets included were:

Lascelles Abercrombie - Kenneth Allott - J. Redwood Anderson - W. H. Auden - George Barker - Clifford Bax - Hilaire Belloc - John Betjeman - Laurence Binyon - Edmund Blunden - Gordon Bottomley - F. V. Branford - Robert Bridges - Gerald Bullett - J. Campbell - Roy Campbell - Miles Carpenter - Christopher Caudwell - G. K. Chesterton - Wilfred Rowland Childe - Richard Church - Austin Clarke - Padraic Colum - A. E. Coppard - John Cornford - Charles Dalmon - W. H. Davies - Edward Davison - Walter De la Mare - Lord Alfred Douglas - John Drinkwater - Clifford Dyment - A. E. - T. S. Eliot - John Freeman - David Gascoyne - Wilfrid Gibson - O. St. John Gogarty - G. Rostrevor Hamilton - Thomas Hardy - Kenneth Hare - Christopher Hassall - F. R. Higgins - Ralph Hodgson - A. E. Housman - Frank Kendon - D. H. Lawrence - John Lehmann - C. Day Lewis - F. L. Lucas - G. H. Luce - Lilian Bowes Lyon - Louis MacNeice - Charles Madge - John Masefield - Hugh MacDiarmid - Michael McKenna - Charlotte Mew - Harold Monro - Charlotte Mew - T. Sturge Moore - Edwin Muir - Frank O'Connor - Seumas O'Sullivan - Herbert Palmer - Eden Phillpotts - Ruth Pitter - William Plomer - F. T. Prince - Herbert Read - Laura Riding - Anne Ridler - Michael Roberts - V. Sackville-West - Siegfried Sassoon - Edward Shanks - Edith Sitwell - Osbert Sitwell - Stevie Smith - Stanley Snaith - Helen Spalding - Stephen Spender - J. C. Squire - James Stephens - L. A. G. Strong - Randall Swingler - A. S. J. Tessimond - Dylan Thomas - Ruthven Todd - W. J. Turner - Arthur Waley - Rex Warner - Sylvia Townsend Warner - Winifred Welles - Dorothy Wellesley - Laurence Whistler - Humbert Wolfe - W. B. Yeats - Andrew Young

The Chatto Book of Modern Poetry 1915-1955 (1956)

Edited by Day-Lewis and John Lehmann. Poets included were:

Thomas Hardy - Robert Bridges - A. E. Housman - Rudyard Kipling - W. B. Yeats - Laurence Binyon - Charlotte Mew - W. H. Davies - Walter De la Mare - John Masefield - Edward Thomas - Harold Monro - John Freeman - D. H. Lawrence - Andrew Young - Frances Cornford - Siegfried Sassoon - Edwin Muir - Edith Sitwell - T. S. Eliot - Fredegond Shove - W. J. Turner - Dorothy Wellesley - Isaac Rosenberg - V. Sackville-West - Osbert Sitwell - Richard Church - Robert Nichols - Wilfred Owen - Herbert Read - Lilian Bowes Lyon - Robert Graves - Edmund Blunden - Ruth Pitter - Sacheverell Sitwell - Edgell Rickword - Roy Campbell - Michael Roberts - A. S. J. Tessimond - William Plomer - Stanley Snaith - C. Day Lewis - Frances Bellerby - Norman Cameron - Rex Warner - Peter Quennell - John Betjeman - William Empson - Vernon Watkins - Sheila Wingfield - W. H. Auden - John Lehmann - Louis MacNeice - E. J. Scovell - Julian Bell - Jocelyn Brooke - Kathleen Raine - James Reeves - W. R. Rodgers - Bernard Spencer - Stephen Spender - Lynette Roberts - Hal Summers - Rayner Heppenstall - Paul Dehn - Roy Fuller - F. T. Prince - Anne Ridler - R. S. Thomas - George Barker - Patric Dickinson - Lawrence Durrell - Clifford Dyment - Norman Nicholson - Henry Reed - Dylan Thomas - Peter Yates - John Cornford - G. S. Fraser - Laurie Lee - Diana Witherby - David Gascoyne - Jack R. Clemo - Alun Lewis - Terence Tiller - Charles Causley - W. S. Graham - John Heath-Stubbs - James Kirkup - Keith Douglas - J. C. Hall - Hamish Henderson - David Wright - Sidney Keyes - Alan Ross - Helen Spalding