Joseph Lee was a Scottish journalist, artist and poet who chronicled life in the trenches and has been described as “Scotland's forgotten war poet”.
Born in Dundee in 1876, Lee started work at 14 in the office of a local solicitor before going to sea as a stoker on a steamship. On his return, he moved to London, where he worked as a cartoonist and newspaper artist before returning to Dundee where he worked on several newspapers as writer, editor and publisher.
In 1909 he founded and edited ‘The Tocsin’, a monthly publication which promoted the labour movement. The same year, he joined publishers John Leng & Co, contributing poetry to ‘The People's Journal’, which he would go on to edit. Lee published his first poetry collection, ‘Tales o’ Our Town’, in 1910.
When war broke out, Lee enlisted, aged 40, and joined the fourth battalion of the Black Watch. While serving in France, he sent sketches and poems back to Scotland and became known as “the Black Watch poet”.
In 1917, he was reported missing in action but had in fact been captured and held in various prisoner-of-war camps where he kept journals and made sketches. These were later adapted and published as ‘A Captive in Carlsruhe’.
After the war, Lee moved to Epsom and worked as a sub-editor on ‘The News Chronicle’. Lee's war poetry attracted great praise when it was published but has received less attention since.
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