Cecil Day-Lewis - AbsoluteAstronomy.com

Cecil Day-Lewis CBE (27 April 1904 – 22 May 1972) was an Irish

Irish

Irish may refer to:*Irish cuisine* Ireland, an island in north-western Europe, on which are located:** Northern Ireland, a constituent country of the United Kingdom** Republic of Ireland, a sovereign state...

poet and the Poet Laureate

Poet Laureate of the United Kingdom

The Poet Laureate of the United Kingdom, also referred to as the Poet Laureate, is the Poet Laureate appointed by the monarch of the United Kingdom on the advice of the Prime Minister...

from 1968 until his death in 1972. He also wrote mystery stories under the pseudonym of Nicholas Blake. He is the father of actor Daniel Day-Lewis

Daniel Day-Lewis

Daniel Michael Blake Day-Lewis is an English actor with both British and Irish citizenship. His portrayals of Christy Brown in My Left Foot and Daniel Plainview in There Will Be Blood won Academy and BAFTA Awards for Best Actor, and Screen Actors Guild as well as Golden Globe Awards for the latter...

and documentary filmmaker and television chef Tamasin Day-Lewis

Tamasin Day-Lewis

Lydia Tamasin Day-Lewis, better known as Tamasin Day-Lewis, is an English television chef, daughter of the poet Cecil Day-Lewis and actress Jill Balcon, and sister of the actor Daniel Day-Lewis.-Biography:...

Personal life

Day-Lewis was born in Ballintubbert, County Laois, Ireland. He was the son of the Reverend Frank Cecil Day-Lewis (December 1872 (?) – 29 July 1937) and Kathleen Squires. After Day-Lewis's mother died in 1906, he was brought up in London by his father, with the help of an aunt, spending summer holidays with relatives in Wexford

Wexford

Wexford is the county town of County Wexford, Ireland. It is situated near the southeastern corner of Ireland, close to Rosslare Europort. The town is connected to Dublin via the M11/N11 National Primary Route, and the national rail network...

. Day-Lewis continued to regard himself as Anglo-Irish

Anglo-Irish

Anglo-Irish was a term used primarily in the 19th and early 20th centuries to identify a privileged social class in Ireland, whose members were the descendants and successors of the Protestant Ascendancy, mostly belonging to the Church of Ireland, which was the established church of Ireland until...

for the remainder of his life, though after the declaration

Republic of Ireland Act

The Republic of Ireland Act 1948 is an Act of the Oireachtas which declared the Irish state to be a republic, and vested in the President of Ireland the power to exercise the executive authority of the state in its external relations, on the advice of the Government of Ireland...

of the Republic of Ireland in 1948 he chose British

British nationality law

British nationality law is the law of the United Kingdom that concerns citizenship and other categories of British nationality. The law is complex because of the United Kingdom's former status as an imperial power.-History:...

rather than Irish citizenship, on the grounds that 1940 had taught him where his deepest roots lay. He was educated at Sherborne School

Sherborne School

Sherborne School is a British independent school for boys, located in the town of Sherborne in north-west Dorset, England. It is one of the original member schools of the Headmasters' and Headmistresses' Conference....

and at Wadham College, Oxford

Wadham College, Oxford

Wadham College is one of the constituent colleges of the University of Oxford in the United Kingdom, located at the southern end of Parks Road in central Oxford. It was founded by Nicholas and Dorothy Wadham, wealthy Somerset landowners, during the reign of King James I...

, from which he graduated in 1927.

In 1928 he married Mary King, the daughter of a Sherborne master (i.e. teacher), and worked as a schoolmaster in three schools. During the 1940s he had a long and troubled love affair with the novelist Rosamond Lehmann

Rosamond Lehmann

Rosamond Nina Lehmann, CBE , was a British novelist. Her first novel, Dusty Answer , was a succès de scandale; she subsequently became established in the literary world and intimate with members of the Bloomsbury set...

. His second marriage was to actress Jill Balcon

Jill Balcon

Jill Angela Henriette Balcon was an English film and radio actress. She made her film debut in Nicholas Nickleby , though she was best known for her stage, television, and radio work....

During the Second World War

World War II

World War II, or the Second World War , was a global conflict lasting from 1939 to 1945, involving most of the world's nations—including all of the great powers—eventually forming two opposing military alliances: the Allies and the Axis...

he worked as a publications editor in the Ministry of Information, an institution satirised by George Orwell

George Orwell

Eric Arthur Blair , better known by his pen name George Orwell, was an English author and journalist...

in his dystopian Nineteen Eighty-Four
Nineteen Eighty-Four
Nineteen Eighty-Four by George Orwell is a dystopian novel about Oceania, a society ruled by the oligarchical dictatorship of the Party...

, but equally based on Orwell's experience of the BBC

BBC

The British Broadcasting Corporation is a British public service broadcaster. Its headquarters is at Broadcasting House in the City of Westminster, London. It is the largest broadcaster in the world, with about 23,000 staff...

.

After the war he joined the publisher Chatto & Windus as a director and senior editor. In 1946 Day-Lewis was a lecturer at Cambridge University, publishing his lectures in The Poetic Image (1947). In 1951 he married the actress Jill Balcon

Jill Balcon

Jill Angela Henriette Balcon was an English film and radio actress. She made her film debut in Nicholas Nickleby , though she was best known for her stage, television, and radio work....

, daughter of Michael Balcon

Michael Balcon

Sir Michael Elias Balcon was an English film producer, known for his work with Ealing Studios.-Background:...

. He later taught poetry at Oxford, where he was Professor of Poetry from 1951-1956. From 1962-1963 Day-Lewis was the Norton Professor at Harvard University

Harvard University

Harvard University is a private Ivy League university located in Cambridge, Massachusetts, United States, established in 1636 by the Massachusetts legislature. Harvard is the oldest institution of higher learning in the United States and the first corporation chartered in the country...

.

Day-Lewis's two marriages yielded four children, including Academy Award-winning actor Daniel Day-Lewis

Daniel Day-Lewis

, food writer and journalist Tamasin Day-Lewis

Tamasin Day-Lewis

, and TV critic and writer Sean Day-Lewis, who wrote a biography of his father, C. Day Lewis: An English Literary Life (1980).

Day-Lewis was chairman of the Arts Council

Arts council

An arts council is a government or private, non-profit organization dedicated to promoting the arts mainly by funding local artists, awarding prizes, and organizing events at home and abroad...

Literature

Literature is the art of written works, and is not bound to published sources...

Panel, vice-president of the Royal Society of Literature

Royal Society of Literature

The Royal Society of Literature is the "senior literary organisation in Britain". It was founded in 1820 by George IV, in order to "reward literary merit and excite literary talent". The Society's first president was Thomas Burgess, who later became the Bishop of Salisbury...

, an Honorary Member of the American Academy of Arts and Letters, a Member of the Irish Academy of Letters and a professor of rhetoric

Rhetoric

Rhetoric is the art of discourse, an art that aims to improve the facility of speakers or writers who attempt to inform, persuade, or motivate particular audiences in specific situations. As a subject of formal study and a productive civic practice, rhetoric has played a central role in the Western...

at Gresham College

Gresham College

Gresham College is an institution of higher learning located at Barnard's Inn Hall off Holborn in central London, England. It was founded in 1597 under the will of Sir Thomas Gresham and today it hosts over 140 free public lectures every year within the City of London.-History:Sir Thomas Gresham,...

, London.

Day-Lewis died from pancreatic cancer

Pancreatic cancer

Pancreatic cancer refers to a malignant neoplasm of the pancreas. The most common type of pancreatic cancer, accounting for 95% of these tumors is adenocarcinoma, which arises within the exocrine component of the pancreas. A minority arises from the islet cells and is classified as a...

on 22 May 1972 in the Hertfordshire home of Kingsley Amis

Kingsley Amis

Sir Kingsley William Amis, CBE was an English novelist, poet, critic, and teacher. He wrote more than 20 novels, six volumes of poetry, a memoir, various short stories, radio and television scripts, along with works of social and literary criticism...

and Elizabeth Jane Howard

Elizabeth Jane Howard

Elizabeth Jane Howard, CBE is an English novelist. She was previously an actress and a model.In 1951 she won the John Llewellyn Rhys Prize for her first novel, The Beautiful Visit...

, where he and his wife were staying. He was a great admirer of Thomas Hardy

Thomas Hardy

Thomas Hardy, OM was an English novelist and poet. While his works typically belong to the Naturalism movement, several poems display elements of the previous Romantic and Enlightenment periods of literature, such as his fascination with the supernatural.While he regarded himself primarily as a...

, and he had arranged to be buried as close as possible to the author's grave in Stinsford churchyard. His epitaph reads: "Shall I be gone long? / For ever and a day / To whom there belong? / Ask the stone to say / Ask my song"

Poetry

In Oxford, Day-Lewis became part of the circle gathered around W. H. Auden

W. H. Auden

Wystan Hugh Auden , who published as W. H. Auden, was an Anglo-American poet,The first definition of "Anglo-American" in the OED is: "Of, belonging to, or involving both England and America." See also the definition "English in origin or birth, American by settlement or citizenship" in See also...

and helped him to edit Oxford Poetry 1927. His first collection of poems, Beechen Vigil, appeared in 1925.
During the Second World War

World War II

his work was now no longer so influenced by Auden and he was developing a more traditional style of lyricism

Lyric poetry

Lyric poetry is a genre of poetry that expresses personal and emotional feelings. In the ancient world, lyric poems were those which were sung to the lyre. Lyric poems do not have to rhyme, and today do not need to be set to music or a beat...

. Some critics believe that he reached his full stature as a poet in Word Over All (1943), when he finally distanced himself from Auden.

He was appointed Poet Laureate in 1968, in succession to John Masefield

John Masefield

John Edward Masefield, OM, was an English poet and writer, and Poet Laureate of the United Kingdom from 1930 until his death in 1967...

Nicholas Blake

In 1935, Day-Lewis decided to supplement his income from poetry by writing a detective novel

Novel

A novel is a book of long narrative in literary prose. The genre has historical roots both in the fields of the medieval and early modern romance and in the tradition of the novella. The latter supplied the present generic term in the late 18th century....

, A Question of Proof, in which he created Nigel Strangeways, an amateur investigator and gentleman detective

Gentleman detective

The gentleman detective is a type of fictional character. He has long been a staple of crime fiction, particularly in detective novels and short stories set in Britain in the Golden Age...

who, as the nephew of an Assistant Commissioner at Scotland Yard

Scotland Yard

Scotland Yard is a metonym for the headquarters of the Metropolitan Police Service of London, UK. It derives from the location of the original Metropolitan Police headquarters at 4 Whitehall Place, which had a rear entrance on a street called Great Scotland Yard. The Scotland Yard entrance became...

, has the same access to, and good relations with, official crime investigation bodies as those enjoyed by other fictional sleuths such as Ellery Queen

Ellery Queen

Ellery Queen is both a fictional character and a pseudonym used by two American cousins from Brooklyn, New York: Daniel Nathan, alias Frederic Dannay and Manford Lepofsky, alias Manfred Bennington Lee , to write, edit, and anthologize detective fiction.The fictional Ellery Queen created by...

, Philo Vance

Philo Vance

Philo Vance featured in 12 crime novels written by S. S. Van Dine , published in the 1920s and 1930s. During that time, Vance was immensely popular in books, movies, and on the radio. He was portrayed as a stylish, even foppish dandy, a New York bon vivant possessing a highly intellectual bent...

and Lord Peter Wimsey

Lord Peter Wimsey

Lord Peter Death Bredon Wimsey is a bon vivant amateur sleuth in a series of detective novels and short stories by Dorothy L. Sayers, in which he solves mysteries; usually, but not always, murders...

. This was followed by nineteen more crime novels. (In the first Nigel Strangeways novel, the detective is modeled on W. H. Auden

W. H. Auden

, but Strangeways becomes a far less extravagant and more serious figure in later novels.) From the mid-1930s Day-Lewis was able to earn his living by writing. Four of the Blake novels - A Tangled Web, Penknife In My Heart, The Deadly Joker, The Private Wound - do not feature Strangeways.

Minute for Murder is set against the background of Day-Lewis's World War II

World War II

experiences in the Ministry of Information. Head of a Traveler features as a principal character a well-known poet, currently frustrated and blocked from writing, whose best poetic days are long behind him; the reader is free to speculate whether the author is describing himself, one of his colleagues, or has entirely invented the character.

Communism

In his youth Day-Lewis adopted communist views, becoming a member of the Communist party from 1935 to 1938, and his early poetry was marked by didacticism and a preoccupation with social themes. In 1937 he edited The Mind in Chains: Socialism and the Cultural Revolution. In the introduction he supported a popular front against a "Capitalism that has no further use for culture". He explains that the title refers to Prometheus bound by his chains, quotes Shelley's preface to Prometheus Unbound and says the contributors believe that "the Promethean fire of enlightenment, which should be given for the benefit of mankind at large, is being used at present to stoke up the furnaces of private profit". The contributors were: Rex Warner, Edward Upward

Edward Upward

Edward Falaise Upward was a British novelist and short story writer and, prior to his death, was believed to be the UK's oldest living author.-Biography:...

, Arthur Calder-Marshall, Barbara Nixon, Anthony Blunt

Anthony Blunt

Anthony Frederick Blunt , was a British art historian who was exposed as a Soviet spy late in his life.Blunt was Professor of the History of Art at the University of London, director of the Courtauld Institute of Art, Surveyor of the King's Pictures and London...

, Alan Bush, Charles Madge

Charles Madge

Charles Madge , was an English poet, journalist and sociologist, now most remembered as a founder of Mass-Observation.As a sociologist, he co-founded Mass-Observation with Tom Harrisson in 1937, an endeavour which would occupy more of his time than literature...

, Alistair Brown, J. D. Bernal

J. D. Bernal

John Desmond Bernal FRS was one of Britain’s best known and most controversial scientists, called "Sage" by his friends, and known for pioneering X-ray crystallography in molecular biology.-Origin and education:His family was Irish, of mixed Italian and Spanish/Portuguese Sephardic Jewish origin...

, T.A.Jackson and Edgell Rickword

Edgell Rickword

John Edgell Rickword, MC was an English poet, critic, journalist and literary editor. He became one of the leading communist intellectuals active in the 1930s.-Early life:He was born in Colchester, Essex...

. After the late 1930s he gradually became disillusioned with communism. Among his works is his autobiography, Buried Day (1960), in which he renounces his communist views, while his detective story The Sad Variety (1964) contains a scathing portrayal of doctrinaire communists, the repression of the 1956 Hungarian uprising, and the ruthless tactics of Soviet intelligence agents.

Poetry collections

Transitional Poem (1929)
From Feathers To Iron (1932)
Collected Poems 1929–1933 (1935)
A Time To Dance And Other Poems (1935)
Overtures to Death (1938)
Short Is the Time (1945)
Collected Poems (1954)
Pegasus and Other Poems (1957)
The Whispering Roots and Other Poems (1970)
The Complete Poems of C.Day-Lewis(1992)

Translations

Virgil's Georgics
Georgics
The Georgics is a poem in four books, likely published in 29 BC. It is the second major work by the Latin poet Virgil, following his Eclogues and preceding the Aeneid. It is a poem that draws on many prior sources and influenced many later authors from antiquity to the present...

(1940)
Le Cimetière Marin by Paul Valéry(1946)
Virgil's Aeneid
Aeneid
The Aeneid is a Latin epic poem, written by Virgil between 29 and 19 BC, that tells the legendary story of Aeneas, a Trojan who travelled to Italy, where he became the ancestor of the Romans. It is composed of roughly 10,000 lines in dactylic hexameter...

(1952)
Eclogues (1963)

Novels written as Nicholas Blake

A Question of Proof (1935)
Thou Shell of Death (1936) (also published as Shell of Death)
The Friendly Tree(1936)
There's Trouble Brewing (1937)
The Beast Must Die (1938)
The Smiler With The Knife (1939)
Malice in Wonderland (1940) (US title: The Summer Camp Mystery)
The Case of the Abominable Snowman (1941) (also published as The Corpse in the Snowman)
Minute for Murder (1947)
Head of a Traveller (1949)
The Dreadful Hollow (1953)
The Whisper in the Gloom (1954) (also published as Catch and Kill)
A Tangled Web (1956) (also published as Death and Daisy Bland)
End of Chapter (1957)
A Penknife in my Heart (1958)
The Widow's Cruise (1959)
The Buried Day(1960)
The Worm of Death (1961)
The Deadly Joker (1963)
The Sad Variety (1964)
The Morning After Death (1966)
The Private Wound (1968)

A New Anthology of Modern Verse 1920-1940 (1941)

Edited by Day-Lewis and L. A. G. Strong. Poets included were:
Lascelles Abercrombie

Lascelles Abercrombie

Lascelles Abercrombie was a British poet and literary critic, one of the "Dymock poets"...

· Kenneth Allott

Kenneth Allott

Kenneth Allott was an Anglo-Irish poet and academic, and authority on Matthew Arnold.-Life:Born in Glamorgan, where his father, a doctor, was serving as a locum, Allott later experienced the break-up of his parents' marriage, followed by the death of his mother...

· J. Redwood Anderson

J. Redwood Anderson

-Life:Anderson was born in Salford and educated at home and at Trinity College, Oxford. After travelling, he settled as a teacher in Kingston-upon-Hull.His play Babel was produced on a number of occasions, and was published by Ernest Benn in 1927...

· W. H. Auden

W. H. Auden

· George Barker

George Barker (poet)

George Granville Barker was an English poet and author.-Life and work:Barker was born in Loughton, near Epping Forest in Essex, England, elder brother of Kit Barker [painter] George Barker was raised by his Irish mother and English father in Battersea, London. He was educated at an L.C.C. school...

· Clifford Bax

Clifford Bax

Clifford Bax was a versatile English writer, known particularly as a playwright, a journalist, critic and editor, and a poet, lyricist and hymn writer. He also was a translator, for example of Goldoni...

· Hilaire Belloc

Hilaire Belloc

Joseph Hilaire Pierre René Belloc was an Anglo-French writer and historian who became a naturalised British subject in 1902. He was one of the most prolific writers in England during the early twentieth century. He was known as a writer, orator, poet, satirist, man of letters and political activist...

· John Betjeman

John Betjeman

Sir John Betjeman, CBE was an English poet, writer and broadcaster who described himself in Who's Who as a "poet and hack".He was a founding member of the Victorian Society and a passionate defender of Victorian architecture...

· Laurence Binyon

Laurence Binyon

Robert Laurence Binyon was an English poet, dramatist and art scholar. His most famous work, For the Fallen, is well known for being used in Remembrance Sunday services....

· Edmund Blunden

Edmund Blunden

Edmund Charles Blunden, MC was an English poet, author and critic. Like his friend Siegfried Sassoon, he wrote of his experiences in World War I in both verse and prose. For most of his career, Blunden was also a reviewer for English publications and an academic in Tokyo and later Hong Kong...

· Gordon Bottomley

Gordon Bottomley

Gordon Bottomley was an English poet, known particularly for his verse dramas. He was partly disabled by tubercular illness. His main influences were the later Victorian Romantic poets, the Pre-Raphaelites and William Morris.- Background :...

· F. V. Branford · Robert Bridges

Robert Bridges

Robert Seymour Bridges, OM, was a British poet, and poet laureate from 1913 to 1930.-Personal and professional life:...

· Gerald Bullett

Gerald Bullett

Gerald William Bullett was a British man of letters. He was known as a novelist, essayist, short story writer, critic and poet. He wrote both supernatural fiction and some children's literature....

· J. Campbell · Roy Campbell

Roy Campbell (poet)

Ignatius Royston Dunnachie Campbell, better known as Roy Campbell, was an Anglo-African poet and satirist. He was considered by T. S. Eliot, Dylan Thomas and Edith Sitwell to have been one of the best poets of the period between the First and Second World Wars...

· Miles Carpenter · Christopher Caudwell

Christopher Caudwell

Christopher Caudwell is the pseudonym of Christopher St. John Sprigg , a British Marxist writer, thinker and poet.He was born into a Catholic family living at 53 Montserrat Road, Putney district, south-west London...

· G. K. Chesterton

G. K. Chesterton

Gilbert Keith Chesterton, KC*SG was an English writer. His prolific and diverse output included philosophy, ontology, poetry, plays, journalism, public lectures and debates, literary and art criticism, biography, Christian apologetics, and fiction, including fantasy and detective fiction....

· Wilfred Rowland Childe

Wilfred Rowland Childe

Wilfred Rowland Childe was a British poet and critic. He was educated at Harrow School and Magdalen College, Oxford. He edited Oxford Poetry in 1916 and 1917. He became a Roman Catholic convert in 1916. He is chiefly remembered for 'Dream English. A Fantastical Romance' which was and still is...

· Richard Church

Richard Church (poet)

Richard Thomas Church was an English writer, known as poet and critic; he also wrote novels and verse plays, and three well-received volumes of autobiography.-Life:...

· Austin Clarke

Austin Clarke (poet)

thumb|300px|Austin Clarke Bridge in [[Templeogue]]Austin Clarke was one of the leading Irish poets of the generation after W. B. Yeats. He also wrote plays, novels and memoirs...

· Padraic Colum

Padraic Colum

Padraic Colum was an Irish poet, novelist, dramatist, biographer, playwright, children's author and collector of folklore. He was one of the leading figures of the Celtic Revival.-Early life:...

· A. E. Coppard

A. E. Coppard

Alfred Edgar Coppard was an English writer, noted for his influence on the short story form, and poet.-Life:He was born, the son of a tailor and a housemaid, in Folkestone, and had little formal education...

· John Cornford

John Cornford

Rupert John Cornford was an English poet and communist. He was the son of F. M. Cornford and Frances Cornford.- Biography :...

· Charles Dalmon

Charles Dalmon

Charles William Dalmon was a British poet, 1890s decadent, 1920s film designer, and friend of Noel Coward.He was a contributor to The Yellow Book, and was published in The Living Age, in the mid-1890s. His poems subsequently appeared in many anthologies, but his reputation was never bright...

· W. H. Davies

W. H. Davies

William Henry Davies or W. H. Davies was a Welsh poet and writer. Davies spent a significant part of his life as a tramp or vagabond in the United States and United Kingdom, but became known as one of the most popular poets of his time...

· Edward Davison · Walter De la Mare

Walter de la Mare

Walter John de la Mare , OM CH was an English poet, short story writer and novelist, probably best remembered for his works for children and the poem "The Listeners"....

· Lord Alfred Douglas

Lord Alfred Douglas

Lord Alfred Bruce Douglas , nicknamed Bosie, was a British author, poet and translator, better known as the intimate friend and lover of the writer Oscar Wilde...

· John Drinkwater · Clifford Dyment

Clifford Dyment

Clifford Henry Dyment FRSL was a British poet, literary critic, editor and journalist, best known for his poems on countryside topics...

· A. E. · T. S. Eliot

T. S. Eliot

Thomas Stearns "T. S." Eliot OM was a playwright, literary critic, and arguably the most important English-language poet of the 20th century. Although he was born an American he moved to the United Kingdom in 1914 and was naturalised as a British subject in 1927 at age 39.The poem that made his...

· John Freeman

John Freeman (Georgian poet)

John Frederick Freeman, , was an English poet and essayist, who gave up a successful career in insurance to write full time.He was born in London, and started as an office boy aged 13...

· David Gascoyne

David Gascoyne

David Gascoyne was an English poet associated with the Surrealist movement.-Early life and Surrealism:...

· Wilfrid Gibson · O. St. John Gogarty · G. Rostrevor Hamilton · Thomas Hardy

Thomas Hardy

· Kenneth Hare · Christopher Hassall

Christopher Hassall

Christopher Vernon Hassall was an English actor, dramatist, librettist, lyricist and poet, who found his greatest fame in a memorable musical partnership with the actor and composer Ivor Novello after working together in the same touring company...

· F. R. Higgins

F. R. Higgins

Frederick Robert Higgins was an Irish poet and theatre director.-Early years:Higgins was born on the west coast of Ireland in Foxford, which is located in County Mayo...

· Ralph Hodgson

Ralph Hodgson

Ralph Hodgson , Order of the Rising Sun ,was an English poet, very popular in his lifetime on the strength of a small number of anthology pieces, such as The Bull. He was one of the more 'pastoral' of the Georgian poets...

· A. E. Housman

A. E. Housman

Alfred Edward Housman , usually known as A. E. Housman, was an English classical scholar and poet, best known to the general public for his cycle of poems A Shropshire Lad. Lyrical and almost epigrammatic in form, the poems were mostly written before 1900...

· Frank Kendon

Frank Kendon

Frank Samuel Herbert Kendon was an English writer, poet and academic. He was also an illustrator, and journalist.He was educated at St John's College, Cambridge, where he became a Fellow in 1948. He was a published poet in the 1920s and later a writer of stories and a novel. From 1935 to 1954 he...

· D. H. Lawrence

D. H. Lawrence

David Herbert Richards Lawrence was an English novelist, poet, playwright, essayist, literary critic and painter who published as D. H. Lawrence. His collected works represent an extended reflection upon the dehumanising effects of modernity and industrialisation...

· John Lehmann

John Lehmann

Rudolf John Frederick Lehmann was an English poet and man of letters, and one of the foremost literary editors of the twentieth century, founding the periodicals New Writing and The London Magazine.The fourth child of journalist Rudolph Lehmann, and brother of Helen Lehmann, novelist Rosamond...

· C. Day-Lewis · F. L. Lucas

F. L. Lucas

Frank Laurence Lucas was an English classical scholar, literary critic, poet, novelist, playwright, political polemicist, and Fellow of King's College, Cambridge....

· G. H. Luce · Lilian Bowes Lyon

Lilian Bowes Lyon

-Biography:Born 23 December 1895 at Ridley Hall in Northumberland. She was the youngest daughter of the Honourable Francis Bowes Lyon. and was a first cousin of Elizabeth Bowes-Lyon, Queen Elizabeth the Queen Mother....

· Louis MacNeice

Louis MacNeice

Frederick Louis MacNeice CBE was an Irish poet and playwright. He was part of the generation of "thirties poets" which included W. H. Auden, Stephen Spender and Cecil Day-Lewis; nicknamed "MacSpaunday" as a group — a name invented by Roy Campbell, in his Talking Bronco...

· Charles Madge

Charles Madge

· John Masefield

John Masefield

John Edward Masefield, OM, was an English poet and writer, and Poet Laureate of the United Kingdom from 1930 until his death in 1967...

· Hugh MacDiarmid

Hugh MacDiarmid

Hugh MacDiarmid is the pen name of Christopher Murray Grieve , a significant Scottish poet of the 20th century. He was instrumental in creating a Scottish version of modernism and was a leading light in the Scottish Renaissance of the 20th century...

· Michael McKenna

Michael McKenna

Dr. Michael McKenna is a fictional character on the New Zealand soap opera, Shortland Street. He was portrayed by Paul Gittins and was part of the original cast.-Creation and Casting:...

· Charlotte Mew

Charlotte Mew

Charlotte Mary Mew was an English poet, whose work spans the cusp between Victorian poetry and Modernism.She was born in Bloomsbury, London the daughter of the architect Frederick Mew, who designed Hampstead town hall and Anna Kendall. She attended Lucy Harrison's School for Girls and lectures at...

· Harold Monro

Harold Monro

Harold Edward Monro was a British poet, the proprietor of the Poetry Bookshop in London which helped many famous poets bring their work before the public....

· Charlotte Mew

Charlotte Mew

· T. Sturge Moore · Edwin Muir

Edwin Muir

Edwin Muir was an Orcadian poet, novelist and translator born on a farm in Deerness on the Orkney Islands. He was remembered for his deeply felt and vivid poetry in plain language with few stylistic preoccupations....

· Frank O'Connor

Frank O'Connor

Frank O’Connor was an Irish author of over 150 works, best known for his short stories and memoirs.-Early life:...

· Seumas O'Sullivan · Herbert Palmer

Herbert Edward Palmer

Herbert Edward Palmer was an English poet and critic.He was born in Market Rasen, Lincolnshire and educated at Woodhouse Grove School, Birmingham University and Bonn University...

· Eden Phillpotts

Eden Phillpotts

Eden Phillpotts was an English author, poet and dramatist. He was born in India, educated in Plymouth, Devon, and worked as an insurance officer for 10 years before studying for the stage and eventually becoming a writer....

· Ruth Pitter

Ruth Pitter

Emma Thomas "Ruth" Pitter, CBE, FRSL was a 20th century British poet.She was the first woman to receive the Queen's Gold Medal for Poetry in 1955, and was appointed a CBE in 1979 to honour her many contributions to English literature.In 1974, she was named a "Companion of Literature", the highest...

· William Plomer

William Plomer

William Charles Franklyn Plomer CBE was a South African author, known as a novelist, poet and literary editor. He was educated mostly in the United Kingdom...

· F. T. Prince

F. T. Prince

Frank Templeton Prince was a British poet and academic, known generally for his best-known poem Soldiers Bathing, written during the Second World War in 1942, which has been frequently included in anthologies....

· Herbert Read

Herbert Read

Sir Herbert Edward Read, DSO, MC was an English anarchist, poet, and critic of literature and art. He was one of the earliest English writers to take notice of existentialism, and was strongly influenced by proto-existentialist thinker Max Stirner....

· Laura Riding

Laura Riding

Laura Jackson was an American poet, critic, novelist, essayist and short story writer.- Early life :...

· Anne Ridler

Anne Ridler

Anne Barbara Ridler OBE was a British poet, and Faber and Faber editor, selecting the Faber A Little Book of Modern Verse with T. S. Eliot . Her Collected Poems were published in 1994...

· Michael Roberts

Michael Roberts (writer)

Michael Roberts , originally named William Edward Roberts, was an English poet, writer, critic and broadcaster, who made his living as a teacher.-Life:...

· V. Sackville-West · Siegfried Sassoon

Siegfried Sassoon

Siegfried Loraine Sassoon CBE MC was an English poet, author and soldier. Decorated for bravery on the Western Front, he became one of the leading poets of the First World War. His poetry both described the horrors of the trenches, and satirised the patriotic pretensions of those who, in Sassoon's...

· Edward Shanks

Edward Shanks

Edward Richard Buxton Shanks was an English writer, known as a war poet of World War I, then as an academic and journalist, and literary critic and biographer. He also wrote some science fiction....

· Edith Sitwell

Edith Sitwell

Dame Edith Louisa Sitwell DBE was a British poet and critic.-Background:Edith Sitwell was born in Scarborough, North Yorkshire, the oldest child and only daughter of Sir George Sitwell, 4th Baronet, of Renishaw Hall; he was an expert on genealogy and landscaping...

· Osbert Sitwell

Osbert Sitwell

Sir Francis Osbert Sacheverell Sitwell, 5th Baronet, was an English writer. His elder sister was Dame Edith Louisa Sitwell and his younger brother was Sir Sacheverell Sitwell; like them he devoted his life to art and literature....

· Stevie Smith

Stevie Smith

Florence Margaret Smith, known as Stevie Smith was an English poet and novelist.-Life:Stevie Smith, born Florence Margaret Smith in Kingston upon Hull, was the second daughter of Ethel and Charles Smith. Contemporary Women Poets...

· Stanley Snaith · Helen Spalding · Stephen Spender

Stephen Spender

Sir Stephen Harold Spender CBE was an English poet, novelist and essayist who concentrated on themes of social injustice and the class struggle in his work...

· J. C. Squire

J. C. Squire

Sir John Collings Squire was a British poet, writer, historian, and influential literary editor of the post-World War I period.- Biography :...

· James Stephens

James Stephens (author)

James Stephens was an Irish novelist and poet.James Stephens wrote many retellings of Irish myths and fairy tales. His retellings are marked by a rare combination of humor and lyricism...

· L. A. G. Strong · Randall Swingler

Randall Swingler

Randall Swingler MM was an English poet, writing extensively in the 1930s in the communist interest.His was a prosperous middle class Anglican family near Nottingham, with an industrial background in the Midlands. He was educated at Winchester College, and New College, Oxford...

· A. S. J. Tessimond

A. S. J. Tessimond

Arthur Seymour John Tessimond was an English poet.He went to Charterhouse School, but ran away at age 16...

· Dylan Thomas

Dylan Thomas

Dylan Marlais Thomas was a Welsh poet and writer, Encyclopædia Britannica. Retrieved 11 January 2008. who wrote exclusively in English. In addition to poetry, he wrote short stories and scripts for film and radio, which he often performed himself...

· Ruthven Todd

Ruthven Todd

Ruthven Campbell Todd was a Scottish poet, artist and novelist, best known as an editor of the works of William Blake. He wrote also under the pseudonym R. T. Campbell.-Background:...

· W. J. Turner · Arthur Waley

Arthur Waley

Arthur David Waley CH, CBE was an English orientalist and sinologist.-Life:Waley was born in Tunbridge Wells, Kent, England, as Arthur David Schloss, son of the economist David Frederick Schloss...

· Rex Warner

Rex Warner

Rex Warner was an English classicist, writer and translator. He is now probably best remembered for The Aerodrome , an allegorical novel whose young hero is faced with the disintegration of his certainties about his loved ones and with a choice between the earthy, animalistic life of his home...

· Sylvia Townsend Warner

Sylvia Townsend Warner

Sylvia Nora Townsend Warner was an English novelist and poet.-Life:Sylvia Townsend Warner was born at Harrow on the Hill, the only child of George Townsend Warner and his wife Eleanora Hudleston...

· Winifred Welles · Dorothy Wellesley · Laurence Whistler

Laurence Whistler

Sir Alan Charles Laurence Whistler, CBE was a British poet and artist who devoted himself to glass engraving, on goblets and bowls blown to his own designs, and on large-scale panels and windows in churches and private houses...

· Humbert Wolfe

Humbert Wolfe

Humbert Wolfe CB CBE , was an Italian-born English poet, man of letters and civil servant, from a Jewish family background, his father, Martin Wolff of German descent and his mother, Consuela, née Terraccini, Italian...

· William Butler Yeats

William Butler Yeats

William Butler Yeats was an Irish poet and playwright, and one of the foremost figures of 20th century literature. A pillar of both the Irish and British literary establishments, in his later years he served as an Irish Senator for two terms...

· Andrew Young

Andrew Young (poet)

Andrew John Young was a Scottish poet and clergyman. His status as a poet was recognised quite late and he received the Queen's Gold Medal for Poetry in 1952.-Life:...

The Chatto Book of Modern Poetry 1915-1955 (1956)

Edited by Day-Lewis and John Lehmann

John Lehmann

. Poets included were:
Thomas Hardy

Thomas Hardy

· Robert Bridges

Robert Bridges

Robert Seymour Bridges, OM, was a British poet, and poet laureate from 1913 to 1930.-Personal and professional life:...

· A. E. Housman

A. E. Housman

· Rudyard Kipling

Rudyard Kipling

Joseph Rudyard Kipling was an English poet, short-story writer, and novelist chiefly remembered for his celebration of British imperialism, tales and poems of British soldiers in India, and his tales for children. Kipling received the 1907 Nobel Prize for Literature...

· W. B. Yeats · Laurence Binyon

Laurence Binyon

Robert Laurence Binyon was an English poet, dramatist and art scholar. His most famous work, For the Fallen, is well known for being used in Remembrance Sunday services....

· Charlotte Mew

Charlotte Mew

· W. H. Davies

W. H. Davies

· Walter De la Mare

Walter de la Mare

Walter John de la Mare , OM CH was an English poet, short story writer and novelist, probably best remembered for his works for children and the poem "The Listeners"....

· John Masefield

John Masefield

John Edward Masefield, OM, was an English poet and writer, and Poet Laureate of the United Kingdom from 1930 until his death in 1967...

· Edward Thomas

Edward Thomas (poet)

Philip Edward Thomas was an Anglo-Welsh writer of prose and poetry. He is commonly considered a war poet, although few of his poems deal directly with his war experiences. Already an accomplished writer, Thomas turned to poetry only in 1914...

· Harold Monro

Harold Monro

Harold Edward Monro was a British poet, the proprietor of the Poetry Bookshop in London which helped many famous poets bring their work before the public....

· John Freeman

John Freeman (Georgian poet)

John Frederick Freeman, , was an English poet and essayist, who gave up a successful career in insurance to write full time.He was born in London, and started as an office boy aged 13...

· D. H. Lawrence

D. H. Lawrence

· Andrew Young

Andrew Young (poet)

Andrew John Young was a Scottish poet and clergyman. His status as a poet was recognised quite late and he received the Queen's Gold Medal for Poetry in 1952.-Life:...

· Frances Cornford

Frances Cornford

Frances Crofts Cornford was an English poet.She was the daughter of the botanist Francis Darwin and Ellen Crofts, born into the Darwin — Wedgwood family. She was a granddaughter of the British naturalist Charles Darwin. Her elder half-brother was the golf writer Bernard Darwin...

· Siegfried Sassoon

Siegfried Sassoon

· Edwin Muir

Edwin Muir

· Edith Sitwell

Edith Sitwell

· T. S. Eliot

T. S. Eliot

· Fredegond Shove

Fredegond Shove

Fredegond Shove was an English poet.Fredegond was the daughter of the historian Frederic William Maitland and his wife Florence Henrietta Fisher. She married the economist Gerald Shove....

· W. J. Turner · Dorothy Wellesley · Isaac Rosenberg

Isaac Rosenberg

Isaac Rosenberg was an English poet of the First World War who was considered to be one of the greatest of all English war poets...

· V. Sackville-West · Osbert Sitwell

Osbert Sitwell

· Richard Church

Richard Church (poet)

Richard Thomas Church was an English writer, known as poet and critic; he also wrote novels and verse plays, and three well-received volumes of autobiography.-Life:...

· Robert Nichols · Wilfred Owen

Wilfred Owen

Wilfred Edward Salter Owen MC was an English poet and soldier, one of the leading poets of the First World War...

· Herbert Read

Herbert Read

· Lilian Bowes Lyon

Lilian Bowes Lyon

· Robert Graves

Robert Graves

Robert von Ranke Graves 24 July 1895 – 7 December 1985 was an English poet, translator and novelist. During his long life he produced more than 140 works...

· Edmund Blunden

Edmund Blunden

· Ruth Pitter

Ruth Pitter

· Sacheverell Sitwell

Sacheverell Sitwell

Sir Sacheverell Sitwell, 6th Baronet CH was an English writer, best known as an art critic and writer on architecture, particularly the baroque. He was the younger brother of Dame Edith Sitwell and Sir Osbert Sitwell....

· Edgell Rickword

Edgell Rickword

· Roy Campbell

Roy Campbell (poet)

· Michael Roberts

Michael Roberts (writer)

Michael Roberts , originally named William Edward Roberts, was an English poet, writer, critic and broadcaster, who made his living as a teacher.-Life:...

· A. S. J. Tessimond

A. S. J. Tessimond

Arthur Seymour John Tessimond was an English poet.He went to Charterhouse School, but ran away at age 16...

· William Plomer

William Plomer

William Charles Franklyn Plomer CBE was a South African author, known as a novelist, poet and literary editor. He was educated mostly in the United Kingdom...

· Stanley Snaith · C. Day-Lewis · Frances Bellerby

Frances Bellerby

Mary Eirene Frances Bellerby was an English poet.Born in Bristol, Frances Bellerby was a clergyman's daughter, and lost her only brother in the First World War. Having worked as a teacher and journalist, she married John Rotherford Bellerby, a Cambridge academic, in 1929...

· Norman Cameron

Norman Cameron

Norman Cameron was a Scottish poet, distantly related to Thomas Babington, Lord Macaulay who, between the two world wars, associated on Majorca with Robert Graves and Laura Riding. Later, as a part-time Fitzrovian, he was a colleague of Dylan Thomas, Geoffrey Grigson, Len Lye, John Aldridge RA,...

· Rex Warner

Rex Warner

· Peter Quennell

Peter Quennell

Sir Peter Courtney Quennell CBE was an English biographer, literary historian, editor, essayist, poet, and critic....

· John Betjeman

John Betjeman

· William Empson

William Empson

Sir William Empson was an English literary critic and poet.He was known as "燕卜荪" in Chinese.He was widely influential for his practice of closely reading literary works, fundamental to the New Critics...

· Vernon Watkins

Vernon Watkins

Vernon Phillips Watkins , was a British poet, and a translator and painter. He was a close friend of Dylan Thomas, who described him as "the most profound and greatly accomplished Welshman writing poems in English"....

· Sheila Wingfield · W. H. Auden

W. H. Auden

· John Lehmann

John Lehmann

· Louis MacNeice

Louis MacNeice

· E. J. Scovell

E. J. Scovell

Edith Joy Scovell was an English poet. She was born in Sheffield, and studied in Westmorland and at Somerville College, Oxford. She married the ecologist Charles Sutherland Elton in 1937. She also translated work of Giovanni Pascoli...

· Julian Bell

Julian Bell

Julian Heward Bell was an English poet, and the son of Clive and Vanessa Bell . The writer Quentin Bell was his younger brother, and the writer and painter Angelica Garnett is his half-sister...

· Jocelyn Brooke

Jocelyn Brooke

Jocelyn Brooke was an English author born in Kent. He wrote several unusual and semi-autobiographical novels as well as some poetry...

· Kathleen Raine

Kathleen Raine

Kathleen Jessie Raine was a British poet, critic, and scholar writing in particular on William Blake, W. B. Yeats and Thomas Taylor. Known for her interest in various forms of spirituality, most prominently Platonism and Neoplatonism, she was a founder member of the Temenos Academy.-Life:Raine was...

· James Reeves · W. R. Rodgers

W. R. Rodgers

William Robert Rodgers , known as Bertie, and born in Belfast, Northern Ireland, was probably best known as a poet, but was also a prose essayist, a book reviewer, a radio broadcaster and script writer, a lecturer and, latterly, a teacher, as well as a former Presbyterian minister.-Early life:He...

· Bernard Spencer

Bernard Spencer

Charles Bernard Spencer was an English poet, translator, and editor.He was born in Madras, India and educated at Marlborough College and Corpus Christi College, Oxford. At Marlborough he knew John Betjeman and Louis MacNeice; at Oxford Stephen Spender, and he also came across W. H. Auden. He...

· Stephen Spender

Stephen Spender

Sir Stephen Harold Spender CBE was an English poet, novelist and essayist who concentrated on themes of social injustice and the class struggle in his work...

· Lynette Roberts

Lynette Roberts

Lynette Roberts was a Welsh poet, born Evelyn Beatrice Roberts in Buenos Aires to parents of Welsh extraction.-Life:...

· Hal Summers · Rayner Heppenstall

Rayner Heppenstall

John Rayner Heppenstall was a British novelist, poet, diarist, and a BBC radio producer.-Early life:...

· Paul Dehn

Paul Dehn

Paul Dehn was a British screenwriter.-Biography and work:Dehn was born in 1912 in Manchester, England. He was educated at Shrewsbury School, and attended Brasenose College, Oxford...

· Roy Fuller

Roy Fuller

Roy Broadbent Fuller was an English writer, known mostly as a poet. He was born in Failsworth, Lancashire, and brought up in Blackpool. He worked as a lawyer for a building society, serving in the Royal Navy 1941-1946.Poems was his first book of poetry. He began to write fiction also in the 1950s...

· F. T. Prince

F. T. Prince

· Anne Ridler

Anne Ridler

Anne Barbara Ridler OBE was a British poet, and Faber and Faber editor, selecting the Faber A Little Book of Modern Verse with T. S. Eliot . Her Collected Poems were published in 1994...

· R. S. Thomas

R. S. Thomas

Ronald Stuart Thomas was a Welsh poet and Anglican clergyman, noted for his nationalism, spirituality and deep dislike of the anglicisation of Wales...

· George Barker

George Barker (poet)

· Patric Dickinson

Patric Dickinson

Patric Thomas Dickinson was a British poet, translator from the Greek and Latin classics, and playwright. He also worked for the BBC, from 1942 to 1948. He wrote full time from 1948....

· Lawrence Durrell

Lawrence Durrell

Lawrence George Durrell was an expatriate British novelist, poet, dramatist, and travel writer, though he resisted affiliation with Britain and preferred to be considered cosmopolitan...

· Clifford Dyment

Clifford Dyment

Clifford Henry Dyment FRSL was a British poet, literary critic, editor and journalist, best known for his poems on countryside topics...

· Norman Nicholson

Norman Nicholson

Norman Cornthwaite Nicholson OBE, , was an English poet, known for his association with the Cumberland town of Millom...

· Henry Reed · Dylan Thomas

Dylan Thomas

· Peter Yates

Peter Yates

Peter James Yates was an English director and producer. He was born in Aldershot, Hampshire.The son of an army officer, he attended Charterhouse School as a boy, graduated from the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art and worked for some years as an actor, director and stage manager...

· John Cornford

John Cornford

Rupert John Cornford was an English poet and communist. He was the son of F. M. Cornford and Frances Cornford.- Biography :...

· G. S. Fraser

G. S. Fraser

George Sutherland Fraser was a Scottish poet, literary critic and academic. He was born in Glasgow, later moving with his family to Aberdeen. He went to the University of St. Andrews....

· Laurie Lee

Laurie Lee

Laurence Edward Alan "Laurie" Lee, MBE was an English poet, novelist, and screenwriter, raised in the village of Slad, and went to Marling School, Gloucestershire. His most famous work was an autobiographical trilogy which consisted of Cider with Rosie , As I Walked Out One Midsummer Morning and...

· Diana Witherby · David Gascoyne

David Gascoyne

David Gascoyne was an English poet associated with the Surrealist movement.-Early life and Surrealism:...

· Jack R. Clemo · Alun Lewis

Alun Lewis

Alun Lewis , was a poet of the Anglo-Welsh school, and is regarded by many as Britain's finest Second World War poet.- Education :...

· Terence Tiller

Terence Tiller

Terence Rogers Tiller was an English poet and radio producer.-Early life:He was born in Truro, Cornwall. His early career was in medieval history at the University of Cambridge. During the World War II he taught in Cairo.-BBC:In 1946 he joined the BBC; and was a known Fitzrovian...

· Charles Causley

Charles Causley

Charles Stanley Causley, CBE, FRSL was a Cornish poet, schoolmaster and writer. His work is noted for its simplicity and directness and for its associations with folklore, especially when linked to his native Cornwall....

· W. S. Graham

W. S. Graham

William Sydney Graham was a Scottish poet who is often associated with Dylan Thomas and the neo-romantic group of poets. Graham's poetry was mostly overlooked in his lifetime but, partly due to the support of Harold Pinter, his work has enjoyed a revival in recent years...

· John Heath-Stubbs

John Heath-Stubbs

John Francis Alexander Heath-Stubbs OBE was an English poet and translator, known for his verse influenced by classical myths, and the long Arthurian poem Artorius .- Biography :...

· James Kirkup

James Kirkup

James Falconer Kirkup, FRSL was a prolific English poet, translator and travel writer. He was brought up in South Shields, and educated at South Shields Secondary School and Durham University. He wrote over 30 books, including autobiographies, novels and plays...

· Keith Douglas

Keith Douglas

Keith Castellain Douglas , was an English poet noted for his war poetry during World War II and his wry memoir of the Western Desert Campaign, Alamein to Zem Zem. He was killed during the invasion of Normandy.-Poetry:...

· J. C. Hall

J. C. Hall

J. C. Hall is a Canadian author currently writing in the fantasy genre.Hall was born in Hong Kong and educated in England. She lived and worked in Vancouver for ten years before moving to Toronto...

· Hamish Henderson

Hamish Henderson

Hamish Scott Henderson, was a Scottish poet, songwriter, soldier, and intellectual....

· David Wright

David Wright (poet)

David John Murray Wright was an author and "an acclaimed South African-born poet".-Biography:Wright was born in Johannesburg, South Africa 23 February 1920 of normal hearing....

· Sidney Keyes

Sidney Keyes

Sidney Arthur Kilworth Keyes was an English poet of World War II.- Early years :Keyes was born on 27 May 1922. He attended Tonbridge School for his secondary education and later, for his tertiary, the University of Oxford...

· Alan Ross

Alan Ross

Alan John Ross, , was a British poet, writer and editor. He was born in Calcutta, India, where he spent the first seven years of his life...

· Helen Spalding

External links

Cecil Day-Lewis in the kirjasto website - information
Day-Lewis' poem 'Newsreel' read over footage from 1930s Pathe newsreels
Day Lewis, A Revised Bibliography, 1929-39 and Index of MSS Locations with Introductory Notes by Nick Watson, (a 65 page booklet, Radged Press, 2003)
Recordings of interviews at BBC Four
BBC Four
BBC Four is a British television network operated by the British Broadcasting Corporation and available to digital television viewers on Freeview, IPTV, satellite and cable....

website (Realplayer
RealPlayer
RealPlayer is a cross-platform media player by RealNetworks that plays a number of multimedia formats including MP3, MPEG-4, QuickTime, Windows Media, and multiple versions of proprietary RealAudio and RealVideo formats.-History:...

required)
The Volunteer - An ode to the International Brigade by Cecil Day Lewis

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