Edgell Rickword
Encyclopedia
John Edgell Rickword, MC
(22 October 1898 - 15 March 1982) was an English poet, critic, journalist and literary editor. He became one of the leading communist intellectuals active in the 1930s.
, Essex
. He served as an officer in the British Army
in World War I
, having joined the Artists' Rifles
in 1916, being awarded a Military Cross
.
On 4th January 1919, Rickword developed an illness that was diagnosed as a "general vascular invasion which had resulted in general septicaemia". His left eye was so badly infected that they thought it necessary to remove it to prevent the infection from spreading to the other eye.
He was a published war poet
, and collected his early verse in Behind the Eyes (1921).
He went up to the University of Oxford
in 1919, staying only four terms reading French literature, and leaving when he married. Literary friends from this period included mainly other ex-soldiers: Anthony Bertram
, Edmund Blunden
, Vivian de Sola Pinto
, A. E. Coppard
, Louis Golding
, Robert Graves
, L. P. Hartley
, and Alan Porter. His work appeared in the Oxford Poetry 1921 anthology
, with Blunden, Golding, Porter, Graves, Richard Hughes
, and Frank Prewett
.
's The Waste Land
. J. C. Squire
published him in the London Mercury, and Desmond MacCarthy
as literary editor of the New Statesman
gave him work.
He started the Calendar of Modern Letters literary review, now highly regarded, in March 1925. It lasted until July 1927, assisted by Douglas Garman and then Bertram Higgins, and contributions from his cousin C. H. Rickword. The Scrutinies books of collected pieces from it were a succes d'estime; the purpose of the publication was a mass killing of the sacred cows of Edwardian literature (G. K. Chesterton
, John Galsworthy
, John Masefield
, George Bernard Shaw
, H. G. Wells
). Its undoubted influence as a precursor of later criticism was very marked in the early days of Scrutiny, the magazine founded a few years later by F. R. Leavis
and Q. D. Leavis
. Rickword also wrote for that publication.
in 1934, and became increasingly active in political work during the period of the Spanish Civil War
; while still writing poetry. He was friendly with Randall Swingler
, the 'official' poetry voice of the CPGB, and with Jack Lindsay
, his only real rival as a theoretician. He was closely connected with the leading cultural figures on the hard Left, such as Mulk Raj Anand
, Ralph Fox
, Julius Lipton, A. L. Morton
, Sylvia Townsend Warner
and Alick West. When Lawrence & Wishart was created as the official CPGB publishing house, in 1936, Rickword became a director. It was through Rickword that Lawrence & Wishart published Nancy Cunard
's Negro: An Anthology, though at her own expense.
At that same period he was a co-founder of the Left Review, which he edited. His associates included James Boswell
, who was the art editor; they had met around 1929. Left Review existed from 1934 to 1938, was set up by Rickword and Douglas Garman, had as writers both CPGB members and notable figures outside the party, and founded Marxist criticism in the UK.
Later he became Editor of Our Time, the Communist review, from 1944 to 1947, working with Arnold Rattenbury and David Holbrook
. Rickword had an upbeat view at the time on the possibilities of popular culture and radical politics, and the circulation rose as he broadened the publication's scope from popular political poetry. The post-war clique around Our Time, the Salisbury Group (named for a pub), included Christopher Hill
, Charles Hobday, Holbrook, Mervyn Jones, Lindsay, Rattenbury, Montagu Slater
, Swingler, E. P. Thompson
; and Doris Lessing
joined it.
Military Cross
The Military Cross is the third-level military decoration awarded to officers and other ranks of the British Armed Forces; and formerly also to officers of other Commonwealth countries....
(22 October 1898 - 15 March 1982) 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 ColchesterColchester
Colchester is an historic town and the largest settlement within the borough of Colchester in Essex, England.At the time of the census in 2001, it had a population of 104,390. However, the population is rapidly increasing, and has been named as one of Britain's fastest growing towns. As the...
, Essex
Essex
Essex is a ceremonial and non-metropolitan county in the East region of England, and one of the home counties. It is located to the northeast of Greater London. It borders with Cambridgeshire and Suffolk to the north, Hertfordshire to the west, Kent to the South and London to the south west...
. He served as an officer in the British Army
British Army
The British Army is the land warfare branch of Her Majesty's Armed Forces in the United Kingdom. It came into being with the unification of the Kingdom of England and Scotland into the Kingdom of Great Britain in 1707. The new British Army incorporated Regiments that had already existed in England...
in World War I
World War I
World War I , which was predominantly called the World War or the Great War from its occurrence until 1939, and the First World War or World War I thereafter, was a major war centred in Europe that began on 28 July 1914 and lasted until 11 November 1918...
, having joined the Artists' Rifles
Artists' Rifles
The Artists Rifles is a volunteer regiment of the British Army. Raised in London in 1859 as a volunteer light infantry unit, the regiment saw active service during the Boer Wars and World War I, earning a number of battle honours; however, it did not serve outside of Britain during World War II, as...
in 1916, being awarded a Military Cross
Military Cross
The Military Cross is the third-level military decoration awarded to officers and other ranks of the British Armed Forces; and formerly also to officers of other Commonwealth countries....
.
On 4th January 1919, Rickword developed an illness that was diagnosed as a "general vascular invasion which had resulted in general septicaemia". His left eye was so badly infected that they thought it necessary to remove it to prevent the infection from spreading to the other eye.
He was a published war poet
War poet
A War poet is a poet writing in time of and on the subject of war. The term, which is applied especially to those in military service during World War I, was documented as early as 1848 in reference to German revolutionary poet, Georg Herwegh.-Crimean War:...
, and collected his early verse in Behind the Eyes (1921).
He went up to the University of Oxford
University of Oxford
The University of Oxford is a university located in Oxford, United Kingdom. It is the second-oldest surviving university in the world and the oldest in the English-speaking world. Although its exact date of foundation is unclear, there is evidence of teaching as far back as 1096...
in 1919, staying only four terms reading French literature, and leaving when he married. Literary friends from this period included mainly other ex-soldiers: Anthony Bertram
Anthony Bertram
Anthony Bertram was a British novelist.Bertram was the great-grandfather of actor Thomas Sangster. His wife, Barbara Randolph, was the sister of actor Hugh Grant's maternal grandmother.-Works:...
, 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...
, Vivian de Sola Pinto
Vivian de Sola Pinto
Vivian de Sola Pinto was a British poet, literary critic and historian. He was a leading scholarly authority on D. H. Lawrence, and appeared for the defence in the 1960 Lady Chatterley's Lover trial....
, 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...
, Louis Golding
Louis Golding
Louis Golding was a British writer, very famous in his time especially for his novels, though he is now largely neglected; he wrote also short stories, essays, fantasies, travel books and poetry....
, 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...
, L. P. Hartley
L. P. Hartley
Leslie Poles Hartley was a British writer, known for novels and short stories. His best-known work is The Go-Between , which was made into a 1970 film, directed by Joseph Losey with a star cast, in an adaptation by Harold Pinter...
, and Alan Porter. His work appeared in the Oxford Poetry 1921 anthology
Anthology
An anthology is a collection of literary works chosen by the compiler. It may be a collection of poems, short stories, plays, songs, or excerpts...
, with Blunden, Golding, Porter, Graves, Richard Hughes
Richard Hughes (writer)
Richard Arthur Warren Hughes OBE was a British writer of poems, short stories, novels and plays.He was born in Weybridge, Surrey. His father was a civil servant Arthur Hughes, and his mother Louisa Grace Warren who had been brought up in Jamaica...
, and Frank Prewett
Frank Prewett
Frank James Prewett was a Canadian poet, who spent most of his life in the United Kingdom. He was a war poet of World War I, and was taken up by Siegfried Sassoon...
.
Critic
He then took up literary work in London. He reviewed for the Times Literary Supplement, which led to his celebrated review of T. S. EliotT. 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...
's The Waste Land
The Waste Land
The Waste Land[A] is a 434-line[B] modernist poem by T. S. Eliot published in 1922. It has been called "one of the most important poems of the 20th century." Despite the poem's obscurity—its shifts between satire and prophecy, its abrupt and unannounced changes of speaker, location and time, its...
. 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 :...
published him in the London Mercury, and Desmond MacCarthy
Desmond MacCarthy
Sir Desmond MacCarthy was a British literary critic and journalist.-Early life and education:MacCarthy was born in Plymouth, Devon, and educated at Eton College and Trinity College, Cambridge. At Cambridge he got to know Lytton Strachey, Bertrand Russell and G. E...
as literary editor of the New Statesman
New Statesman
New Statesman is a British centre-left political and cultural magazine published weekly in London. Founded in 1913, and connected with leading members of the Fabian Society, the magazine reached a circulation peak in the late 1960s....
gave him work.
He started the Calendar of Modern Letters literary review, now highly regarded, in March 1925. It lasted until July 1927, assisted by Douglas Garman and then Bertram Higgins, and contributions from his cousin C. H. Rickword. The Scrutinies books of collected pieces from it were a succes d'estime; the purpose of the publication was a mass killing of the sacred cows of Edwardian literature (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....
, John Galsworthy
John Galsworthy
John Galsworthy OM was an English novelist and playwright. Notable works include The Forsyte Saga and its sequels, A Modern Comedy and End of the Chapter...
, 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...
, George Bernard Shaw
George Bernard Shaw
George Bernard Shaw was an Irish playwright and a co-founder of the London School of Economics. Although his first profitable writing was music and literary criticism, in which capacity he wrote many highly articulate pieces of journalism, his main talent was for drama, and he wrote more than 60...
, H. G. Wells
H. G. Wells
Herbert George Wells was an English author, now best known for his work in the science fiction genre. He was also a prolific writer in many other genres, including contemporary novels, history, politics and social commentary, even writing text books and rules for war games...
). Its undoubted influence as a precursor of later criticism was very marked in the early days of Scrutiny, the magazine founded a few years later by F. R. Leavis
F. R. Leavis
Frank Raymond "F. R." Leavis CH was an influential British literary critic of the early-to-mid-twentieth century. He taught for nearly his entire career at Downing College, Cambridge.-Early life:...
and Q. D. Leavis
Q. D. Leavis
Queenie Dorothy Leavis , née Roth, was an English literary critic and essayist.Born in Edmonton, England, she wrote about the historical sociology of reading and the development of the English, the European, and the American novel...
. Rickword also wrote for that publication.
Communist
He joined the Communist Party of Great BritainCommunist Party of Great Britain
The Communist Party of Great Britain was the largest communist party in Great Britain, although it never became a mass party like those in France and Italy. It existed from 1920 to 1991.-Formation:...
in 1934, and became increasingly active in political work during the period of the Spanish Civil War
Spanish Civil War
The Spanish Civil WarAlso known as The Crusade among Nationalists, the Fourth Carlist War among Carlists, and The Rebellion or Uprising among Republicans. was a major conflict fought in Spain from 17 July 1936 to 1 April 1939...
; while still writing poetry. He was friendly with 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...
, the 'official' poetry voice of the CPGB, and with Jack Lindsay
Jack Lindsay
Robert Leeson Jack Lindsay was an Australian-born writer, who from 1926 lived in the United Kingdom, initially in Essex. He was born in Melbourne, but spent his formative years in Brisbane...
, his only real rival as a theoretician. He was closely connected with the leading cultural figures on the hard Left, such as Mulk Raj Anand
Mulk Raj Anand
Mulk Raj Anand was an Indian writer in English, notable for his depiction of the lives of the poorer castes in traditional Indian society. One of the pioneers of Indo-Anglian fiction, he, together with R.K...
, Ralph Fox
Ralph Fox
Ralph Hartzler Fox was an American mathematician. As a professor at Princeton University, he taught and advised many of the contributors to the Golden Age of differential topology, and he played an important role in the modernization and main-streaming of knot theory.Ralph Fox attended Swarthmore...
, Julius Lipton, A. L. Morton
A. L. Morton
Leslie Morton was a prolific English Marxist historian. He worked as an independent scholar; from 1946 onwards he was the Chair of the Historians Group of the Communist Party of Great Britain...
, 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...
and Alick West. When Lawrence & Wishart was created as the official CPGB publishing house, in 1936, Rickword became a director. It was through Rickword that Lawrence & Wishart published Nancy Cunard
Nancy Cunard
Nancy Clara Cunard was a writer, heiress and political activist. She was born into the British upper class but strongly rejected her family's values, devoting much of her life to fighting racism and fascism...
's Negro: An Anthology, though at her own expense.
At that same period he was a co-founder of the Left Review, which he edited. His associates included James Boswell
James Boswell (artist)
James Edward Buchanan Boswell was a New Zealand-born British painter and socialist.-Life:Boswell was born in Westport, South Island, the son of a Scottish born schoolmaster, Edward Blair Buchanan Boswell, and his New Zealand born wife Ida Fair...
, who was the art editor; they had met around 1929. Left Review existed from 1934 to 1938, was set up by Rickword and Douglas Garman, had as writers both CPGB members and notable figures outside the party, and founded Marxist criticism in the UK.
Later he became Editor of Our Time, the Communist review, from 1944 to 1947, working with Arnold Rattenbury and David Holbrook
David Holbrook
David Kenneth Holbrook was a British writer, poet and academic. From 1989 he was an Emeritus Fellow of Downing College, Cambridge.-Life:...
. Rickword had an upbeat view at the time on the possibilities of popular culture and radical politics, and the circulation rose as he broadened the publication's scope from popular political poetry. The post-war clique around Our Time, the Salisbury Group (named for a pub), included Christopher Hill
Christopher Hill (historian)
John Edward Christopher Hill , usually known simply as Christopher Hill, was an English Marxist historian and author of textbooks....
, Charles Hobday, Holbrook, Mervyn Jones, Lindsay, Rattenbury, Montagu Slater
Montagu Slater
Charles Montagu Slater was an English poet, novelist, playwright and librettist.Slater, born in Millom, Cumberland, was selected by Benjamin Britten as librettist for his opera Peter Grimes, which was based on "Letter XXII: Peter Grimes" in George Crabbe's poem The Borough.For the libretto, Slater...
, Swingler, E. P. Thompson
E. P. Thompson
Edward Palmer Thompson was a British historian, writer, socialist and peace campaigner. He is probably best known today for his historical work on the British radical movements in the late 18th and early 19th centuries, in particular The Making of the English Working Class...
; and Doris Lessing
Doris Lessing
Doris May Lessing CH is a British writer. Her novels include The Grass is Singing, The Golden Notebook, and five novels collectively known as Canopus in Argos....
joined it.
Works
- Behind the Eyes (1921) poems
- Rimbaud: The Boy and the Poet (1924)
- Invocation to Angels (1928) poems
- Scrutinies By Various Writers (1928) editor
- Scrutinies Volume II (1931) editor
- Love One Another (1929) Mandrake Press
- Poet Under Saturn. The Tragedy of Verlaine by Marcel Coulon (1932) translator
- A handbook of freedom: a record of English democracy through twelve centuries (1939) Co-editor with Jack LindsayJack LindsayRobert Leeson Jack Lindsay was an Australian-born writer, who from 1926 lived in the United Kingdom, initially in Essex. He was born in Melbourne, but spent his formative years in Brisbane...
- Collected Poems (1947)
- Radical Squibs and Loyal Ripostes: a collection of satirical pamphlets of the Regency period 1819-1821 (1971) editor
- Essays and Opinions Volume 1: 1921-31 (1974) edited by Alan YoungAlan YoungAlan Young is an English-Canadian actor and voice actor, best known for his role as Wilbur Post in the television series Mister Ed and as the voice of Scrooge McDuck in Disney films, TV series and video games...
- Literature and Society: Essays and Opinions, vol.2 1931-1978 (1978)
- Twittingpan and Some Others (1981) poems
- Fifty Poems, A Selection by Edgell Rickword with Introduction by Roy FullerRoy FullerRoy 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...