Alfred Williams (poet)

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Alfred Williams (1877 – April 1930) was a self taught poet who lived in the vicinity of Swindon, UK. He was almost entirely self taught, producing his most famous work, Life in a Railway Factory (1915), at night after completing a gruelling days work in the railway factories. He was nicknamed The Hammerman poet.

Alfred was born in the village of South Marston, the son of a carpenter, who grew up in poverty after his father abandoned his wife and eight children. He became a farm labourer at eleven, and then, when he was fifteen he entered Swindon railway works, where he worked in the Stamping Shop for the next twenty-three years.

Married in 1903, Alfred pursued a demanding schedule of full-time work and private study. He published his first of book of poems in 1909, Songs in Wiltshire, but his health declined and he left the factory in 1914.

Alfred Williams produced a total of thirteen books but died in poverty in 1930 in South Marston. Life in a Railway Factory has been described as "undisputed as the most important literary work ever produced in Swindon, about Swindon."