Jenny Joseph


Jenny Joseph was an English poet.

Life and career

She was born in Birmingham and, with a scholarship, studied English literature at St Hilda's College, Oxford. Her poems were first published when she was at university in the early 1950s. She became a journalist and worked for the Bedfordshire Times, the Oxford Mail and Drum Publications.
Joseph's best known poem, "Warning", was written in 1961, first published in The Listener in 1962, and later included in her 1974 collection Rose In the Afternoon, in The Oxford Book of Twentieth Century English Verse, and in her Selected Poems. "Warning" was identified as the UK's "most popular post-war poem" in a 1996 poll by the BBC. The second line was the inspiration for the Red Hat Society. Due to its popularity, an illustrated gift edition of "Warning", first published by Souvenir Press Ltd in 1997, has now been reprinted 41 times.
Her first book of poems, The Unlooked-for Season won a Gregory Award in 1960 and she won a Cholmondeley Award for her second collection, Rose in the Afternoon in 1974.

Awards and honours