John William Streets

John William Streets (1885–1916) was a Derbyshire coal miner who wrote verse in the evenings and began publishing it before the First World War. He enlisted in the 13th (Service) Battalion, York and Lancaster Regiment, the Sheffield City Battalion, and rose to sergeant; the sonnets that made his name were pencilled in training camp at Hurdcott and in the trenches in France.

He was wounded and reported missing on 1 July 1916, the first day of the Battle of the Somme, and was officially notified as killed in May 1917. His only book, The Undying Splendour (Erskine Macdonald, 1917), gathered his war-time poems, many of them sonnets, and appeared soon after his death was confirmed.