Frank Desprez Biography

Frank Desprez (9 February 1853 – 25 November 1916) was an English playwright, essayist, and poet. He wrote more than twenty pieces for the theatre, as well as numerous shorter works, including his famous poem, Lasca.

Desprez' best-known work, however, is a poem, Lasca, about a Mexican girl and her cowboy sweetheart caught in a cattle stampede "in Texas down by the Rio Grande." The ballad-like poem, first published in a London magazine in 1882, has often been reprinted, usually with deletions and changes, and recited in many parts of the English-speaking world. Between 1873 and 1882 at least four other of Desprez's poems had been published, two of which are about Texas.

In 1884, Desprez began writing for The Era, London's foremost theatre paper, and he became its editor in 1893, a position he held until illness forced him to retire in 1913. Desprez was also wrote dozens of essays on travel, art, music, and famous personalities that were published in English periodicals, most of them between 1905 and 1914.