Born in Dublin in 1798 and educated at Trinity College, James Henry was a controversially humane doctor, a passionate scholar of Virgilian manuscripts, and a lifelong interrogator of Christianity. More than a century after James Henry’s death, Christopher Ricks came upon his poems - printed but unpublished - in the Cambridge University Library. Within these volumes Ricks discovered poetry ‘unaffectedly direct, sinewy, seriously comic. And brave.’ Henry’s convictions and his humour, his idiosyncrasies and his courage, come through in work that, Ricks writes, ‘has an integrity, a consistency, for all its engaging diversity of topic and tone’. With the publication of the Selected Poems of James Henry, the world at large can hear the voice of a remarkable poet.