The son of a butcher and brother of the poet and scholar
Claude Colleer Abbott, Harold Henry Abbott was educated at
King Edward VI Grammar School, Chelmsford, then read English and French literature at the
University of London. After teaching at the
King's School, Gloucester,
Falmouth Grammar,
Royal Grammar Worcester, and
Hymers College, Hull (where he was second master, 1925–1935), he became headmaster of
Beaminster Grammar School (1936–1938) and then of
Hutton Grammar School (1938–1951). For a time, he was also an extramural lecturer at
University College, Hull. and one, the title-poem, in a 1920
Harrap anthology.
Black & White was well enough received for
Chatto & Windus to accept his second collection,
An Essex Harvest, and other poems (1925). Some of these poems had appeared in the
New Statesman (1922–25) and in a second Harrap anthology. His most typical pieces record the work and lives of Essex farming people, with some now unusual countryman's terms, or range descriptively "over the acres of our Essex land". There is much close observation of English nature and local topographical detail ("town" and "market" are
Chelmsford). There are also a few personal poems, and a small number in a more experimental style. Mostly conversational in tone, his poems are traditional in form and metre, ranging from "blank-verse bucolics" Neither volume was reprinted. His poems are not known to have appeared in anthologies since the 1920s. The robin's song has come again: After the morning mist the clear fresh sun Shines on the tinkling stubble and the thatcher's men, Strawing and sprindling now that harvest's done. The robin's song has come again: A song to match the silver drops of dew, To tell me hips and haws are red, and when (oh when!) Berries are full of wine and black of hue. The robin's song has come again: High in the hedges hazel-clusters sway Milky and crisp, and in their moist and grassy den The naked, smooth-skinned mushrooms shrink from day. His third volume,
The Riddles of the Exeter Book (1968), was a collection of his verse-translations from
Old English, of
Anglo-Saxon riddles. Sixteen of these had appeared in his 1925 volume. 's illustration for Abbott's poem 'Black and White', in ''The Year's at the Spring: An Anthology of Recent Poetry'' (New York, 1920) ==Personal life==