In 1902 Masefield was put in charge of the fine art section of the Arts and Industrial Exhibition in Wolverhampton. By then his poems were being published in periodicals and his first collection of verse, "Salt-Water Ballads", was published that year. It included the poem "Sea-Fever". Masefield then wrote two novels, "Captain Margaret" (1908) and "Multitude and Solitude" (1909). In 1911, after a long period of writing no poems, he composed "The Everlasting Mercy", the first of his narrative poems, and within the next year had produced two more, "The Widow in the Bye Street" and "Dauber". As a result, he became widely known to the public and was praised by the critics. In 1912 he was awarded the annual Edmond de Polignac Prize.