John B. Tabb


Father John Banister Tabb was an American poet, Roman Catholic priest, and professor of English.

Biography

Born into one of Virginia's oldest and wealthiest families, he became a blockade runner for the Confederacy during the Civil War, and spent eight months in a Union prison camp ; he converted to the Roman Catholic Church in 1872, and began to teach Greek and English at Saint Charles College in 1878.
He was ordained as a priest in 1884, after which he retained his academic position. Plagued by eye problems his whole life, he continued to teach though he lost his sight completely about a year before he died.
Father Tabb was widely published in popular and prestigious magazines of the day, including Harper's Monthly, The Atlantic Monthly, and The Cosmopolitan. His books of poetry include Poems, Lyrics,
Later Lyrics, and, posthumously,
Later Poems. He also wrote one prose work,
Bone Rules, an English grammar; only one of his sermons has survived, a sermon on the Assumption.
English poet Alice Meynell made A Selection from the Verses of John B. Tabb. His biographer, Francis A. Litz, a former student of Tabb's, published previously uncollected poems and previously unpublished poems in Father Tabb: A Study of His Life and Works ; Litz also edited a collected edition, The Poetry of Father Tabb.
The Tabb Monument in Amelia County, Virginia is dedicated to his memory.