Roy Croft

Who is Roy Croft?

Roy Croft is a poet frequently given credit for writing a poem titled "Love" and beginning "I love you not only for what you are, but for what I am when I am with you.". This poem, which is commonly used in wedding speeches and readings and is quoted frequently, is nearly identical in meaning to a German-language poem titled Ich liebe Dich and composed by Austrian poet Erich Fried; the main difference is that Croft's version stops at the third-from-last line of Fried's poem, with the effect that Fried's poem contains two final lines for which Croft's version has no equivalent. Croft's version appears without further attribution in The Family Book of Best Loved Poems, edited by David L. George and published in 1952 by Doubleday & Company, Inc., then of Garden City, New York.

Little is known about the poet himself: A poet by this name had a 28-page collection published in 1979 by Blue Mountain Arts Press. Investigators such as Ted Nesbitt have surmised that if this Roy Croft is the same poet whose work appears in the Doubleday anthology above, his nationality was American and he lived at some time between the years 1905 and 1980. Some amateur investigators have speculated that "Roy Croft" is a pseudonym used by a translator who wanted to keep all royalties from publication or who simply did not want to go through the trouble of obtaining a license from a foreign entity. Whatever the translator's motive for using the Roy Croft pseudonym, the pseudonym itself may have been inspired by the early 20th century Roycroft publishing company.