John Middleton Murry
Encyclopedia
John Middleton Murry was an English writer. He was prolific, producing more than 60 books and thousands of essays and reviews on literature, social issues, politics, and religion during his lifetime. A prominent critic
, Murry is best remembered for his association with Katherine Mansfield
, whom he married as her second husband, in 1918, his friendship with D. H. Lawrence
, and his friendship (and brief affair) with Frieda Lawrence. Following Mansfield's death, Murry edited her work.
, London, the son of a civil servant. He was educated at Christ's Hospital
and Brasenose College, Oxford
. There he met the writer Joyce Cary
, a lifelong friend.
He met Katherine Mansfield at the end of 1911, through W. L. George
. His intense relationship with her, her early death, and his subsequent allusions to it, shaped both his later life and the attitudes (often hostile) of others to him. Leonard Woolf
in his memoirs called Murry "Pecksniffian". By 1933 his reputation "had touched bottom", and Rayner Heppenstall
's short book of 1934, John Middleton Murry: A Study in Excellent Normality, could note that he was "the best-hated man of letters in the country".
.
In 1914 he met D. H. Lawrence
, and became an important supporter. The next year they started a short-lived magazine together, The Signature. In 1931, after a complex evolution of the relationship, Murry wrote in Son of Woman one of the first and most influential posthumous assessments of Lawrence as a man.
Medically certified as unfit for the military, with pleurisy
and possible tuberculosis
, during the war years he was part of the Garsington
circle of Ottoline Morrell.
In 1919, Murry became the editor of the Athenaeum, recently purchased by Arthur Rowntree. Under his editorship it was a literary review that featured work by T. S. Eliot
, Virginia Woolf
, Lytton Strachey
, Clive Bell
, and other members of the Bloomsbury Group
. It lasted until 1921. It had enthusiastic support from E. M. Forster
, who later wrote that "Here at last was a paper that was a pleasure to read and an honour to write for, and which linked up literature and life". Its fate was to be merged into The Nation, which became The Nation and Athenaeum, in the period 1923 to 1930 edited by H. D. Henderson.
In 1923 he became the founding editor of the influential periodical, The Adelphi
(The New Adelphi, 1927–30), which involved associations with Jack Common
and Max Plowman
. It continued in various forms until 1948. It reflected his successive interests in Lawrence, an unorthodox Marxism, pacifism, and a return to the land.
According to David Goldie, Murry and the Adelphi, and Eliot and the Criterion, were in an important rivalry by the mid-1920s, with competing definitions of literature, based respectively on romanticism
allied to liberalism and a subjective approach, and a form of classicism
allied to traditionalism and a religious attitude. In this contest, Goldie says, Eliot emerged a clear victor, in the sense that in the 1930s London Eliot had taken the centre of the critical stage.
, which he disavowed in 1913.
He was one of an identified group of post-World War I
critics that included Richard Aldington
, Robert Graves
, Aldous Huxley
, Herbert Read
, and Edgell Rickword
. Murry gave Huxley an editorial job at The Athenaeum.
Murry led the charge against Georgian poetry
. A leader in the 16 May 1919 edition of The Athenaeum was an early example of a reasoned attack against the Georgian style of verse; and Murry coupled this with an adversarial attitude to the London Mercury
edited by J. C. Squire
. He reviewed quite harshly Siegfried Sassoon
's Counter-Attack in 1918, despite having helped him in 1917 to draft an anti-war piece for H. W. Massingham's The Nation. In-house, however, he was not master enough to award an essay competition prize to the then-unknown Herbert Read, over the wishes of George Saintsbury
and Robert Bridges
, who preferred the poet William Orton.
F. R. Leavis
admired and was influenced by Murry's early criticism. Later he was to attack Murry viciously, in the pages of Scrutiny.
, Murry describes the project of Romanticism
as one of inner exploration:
The upshot of this discovery results in the highest degree of ethical awareness, "an immediate knowledge of what I am and may not do." The awareness of one being "really alone" in the universe, as he put it, marks the final point of discovery which is followed by the upward ascent to spiritual life.
Murry vividly narrates this exploration as a spiritual conversion—what he describes as a "desolation" followed by "illumination" -- after the death of Katherine Mansfield (who had moved to Gurdjieff
's Institute for the Harmonious Development of Man where she died).
joined Murry and Sir Richard Rees in developing The Adelphi as a socialist, and later pacifist, monthly; Murry had founded it in 1923 as a literary journal (The New Adelphi, 1927–30); Rees edited it from 1930; Plowman took on the role in 1938. The Adelphi was closely aligned with the Independent Labour Party
; Jack Common
worked for it as circulation promoter and assistant editor in the 1930s.
Plowman co-founded in 1934 and ran the Adelphi Centre. It was an early commune
, based on a farm in Langham, Essex
bought by Murry. Short-lived in its original conception, it ran a Summer School in August 1936 that was stellar: George Orwell
spoke on "An Outsider Sees the Distressed Areas" on 4 August, with Rayner Heppenstall
in the chair. Other speakers were Steve Shaw, Herbert Read
, Grace Rogers, J. Hampden Jackson, N. A. Holdaway (a Marxist theorist and schoolmaster, and a Director of the Centre), Geoffrey Sainsbury, Reinhold Niebuhr
, Karl Polanyi
, John Strachey, Plowman and Common.
By 1937 the commune had collapsed, and the house, 'The Oaks', was turned over to some 60 Basque
refugee children under the auspices of the Peace Pledge Union
; they remained until 1939.
, from South Acre
to the Old Rectory, Larling
, and wrote in two weeks his The Necessity of Communism. It was this identification as "mystical Marxist" that led Bert Trick (1889–1968) to introduce Dylan Thomas
to Murry, in 1933. The occasion went well enough for Richard Rees to publish Thomas in the Adelphi.
He supported the small Independent Socialist Party (UK)
, a regional breakaway from the Independent Labour Party
.
, and editor of its weekly newspaper, Peace News
, from 1940 to 1946.
Murry's opinions during this period often provoked controversy. He angered many left-wingers (including Vera Brittain
) by arguing Nazi Germany should be allowed retain control of mainland Europe. Murry believed even though Nazi rule was tyrannical, it was preferable to the horrors of total war
. Murry's anti-feminism also drew criticism from feminist pacifists such as Brittain and Sybil Morrison
. Finally Murry's opposition to the Soviet Union
was attacked by pro-Soviet elements in the peace movement.
Murry later "renounced his pacifism in 1948 and...urged a preventative war against the Soviet Union, ending his life as a Conservative
voter".
During this period Murry was widely known as a Christian intellectual. He had in fact considered ordination
as an Anglican priest, but gave up on it after a diagnosis in 1938 of Buerger's disease
, coupled with doubts about his marriages (his third was then breaking up messily).
His views converged with those of Eliot; he supported a type of elitism
foreshadowed by Samuel Taylor Coleridge
's clerisy, and argued for by Matthew Arnold
. In Christianity and Culture, Eliot partially supported Murry's reasoning from The Price of Leadership (1939), though stopping short of the endorsement of Arnold.
in 1918, to Violet Le Maistre in 1924, to Elizabeth Cockbayne in 1932 and to Mary Gamble in 1954. With his second wife, Violet Le Maistre, he had two children: a daughter, Katherine Violet Middleton Murry who became a writer and published "Beloved Quixote, the secret life of John Middleton Murry" in 1986, and a son, John Middleton Murry, Jr.
, who became a writer under the names of Colin Murry and Richard Cowper. There were also two children of the third marriage.
(1928). He was the model for Philip Surrogate in Graham Greene
's 1934 novel It's a Battlefield; Greene did not know him personally. David Holbrook
wrote that Gudrun and Gerald in Lawrence's Women in Love were based on Mansfield and Murry.
Murry appears as a character in Amy Rosenthal's
DH Lawrence biodrama On The Rocks. In the 2008 Hampstead Theatre
production Murry was played by Nick Caldecott
with Ed Stoppard
as Lawrence and Charlotte Emmerson as Mansfield.
Critic
A critic is anyone who expresses a value judgement. Informally, criticism is a common aspect of all human expression and need not necessarily imply skilled or accurate expressions of judgement. Critical judgements, good or bad, may be positive , negative , or balanced...
, Murry is best remembered for his association with Katherine Mansfield
Katherine Mansfield
Kathleen Mansfield Beauchamp Murry was a prominent modernist writer of short fiction who was born and brought up in colonial New Zealand and wrote under the pen name of Katherine Mansfield. Mansfield left for Great Britain in 1908 where she encountered Modernist writers such as D.H. Lawrence and...
, whom he married as her second husband, in 1918, his friendship with 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...
, and his friendship (and brief affair) with Frieda Lawrence. Following Mansfield's death, Murry edited her work.
Early life
He was born in PeckhamPeckham
Peckham is a district in south London, England, located in the London Borough of Southwark. It is situated south-east of Charing Cross. The area is identified in the London Plan as one of 35 major centres in Greater London...
, London, the son of a civil servant. He was educated at Christ's Hospital
Christ's Hospital
Christ's Hospital is an English coeducational independent day and boarding school with Royal Charter located in the Sussex countryside just south of Horsham in Horsham District, West Sussex, England...
and Brasenose College, Oxford
Brasenose College, Oxford
Brasenose College, originally Brazen Nose College , is one of the constituent colleges of the University of Oxford in the United Kingdom. As of 2006, it has an estimated financial endowment of £98m...
. There he met the writer Joyce Cary
Joyce Cary
Joyce Cary was an Anglo-Irish novelist and artist.-Youth and education:...
, a lifelong friend.
He met Katherine Mansfield at the end of 1911, through W. L. George
W. L. George
Walter Lionel George was an English writer, chiefly known for his popular fiction, which included feminist, pacifist, and pro-labor themes.-Life:...
. His intense relationship with her, her early death, and his subsequent allusions to it, shaped both his later life and the attitudes (often hostile) of others to him. Leonard Woolf
Leonard Woolf
Leonard Sidney Woolf was an English political theorist, author, publisher and civil servant, and husband of author Virginia Woolf.-Early life:...
in his memoirs called Murry "Pecksniffian". By 1933 his reputation "had touched bottom", and Rayner Heppenstall
Rayner Heppenstall
John Rayner Heppenstall was a British novelist, poet, diarist, and a BBC radio producer.-Early life:...
's short book of 1934, John Middleton Murry: A Study in Excellent Normality, could note that he was "the best-hated man of letters in the country".
Editor
From 1911 to 1913, Murry was editor of the literary magazine Rhythm, which was later renamed The Blue ReviewThe Blue Review
Rhythm was a literary, arts, and critical review magazine published in London, England from 1911 to 1913....
.
In 1914 he met 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...
, and became an important supporter. The next year they started a short-lived magazine together, The Signature. In 1931, after a complex evolution of the relationship, Murry wrote in Son of Woman one of the first and most influential posthumous assessments of Lawrence as a man.
Medically certified as unfit for the military, with pleurisy
Pleurisy
Pleurisy is an inflammation of the pleura, the lining of the pleural cavity surrounding the lungs. Among other things, infections are the most common cause of pleurisy....
and possible tuberculosis
Tuberculosis
Tuberculosis, MTB, or TB is a common, and in many cases lethal, infectious disease caused by various strains of mycobacteria, usually Mycobacterium tuberculosis. Tuberculosis usually attacks the lungs but can also affect other parts of the body...
, during the war years he was part of the Garsington
Garsington
Garsington is a village and civil parish about southeast of Oxford in Oxfordshire.-Notable Garsington buildings:The earliest part of the Church of England parish church of Saint Mary is the Norman tower, built towards the end of the 12th century. The Gothic Revival architect Joseph Clarke restored...
circle of Ottoline Morrell.
In 1919, Murry became the editor of the Athenaeum, recently purchased by Arthur Rowntree. Under his editorship it was a literary review that featured work by 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...
, Virginia Woolf
Virginia Woolf
Adeline Virginia Woolf was an English author, essayist, publisher, and writer of short stories, regarded as one of the foremost modernist literary figures of the twentieth century....
, Lytton Strachey
Lytton Strachey
Giles Lytton Strachey was a British writer and critic. He is best known for establishing a new form of biography in which psychological insight and sympathy are combined with irreverence and wit...
, Clive Bell
Clive Bell
Arthur Clive Heward Bell was an English Art critic, associated with formalism and the Bloomsbury Group.- Origins :Clive Bell was born in East Shefford, Berkshire, in 1881...
, and other members of the Bloomsbury Group
Bloomsbury Group
The Bloomsbury Group or Bloomsbury Set was a group of writers, intellectuals, philosophers and artists who held informal discussions in Bloomsbury throughout the 20th century. This English collective of friends and relatives lived, worked or studied near Bloomsbury in London during the first half...
. It lasted until 1921. It had enthusiastic support from E. M. Forster
E. M. Forster
Edward Morgan Forster OM, CH was an English novelist, short story writer, essayist and librettist. He is known best for his ironic and well-plotted novels examining class difference and hypocrisy in early 20th-century British society...
, who later wrote that "Here at last was a paper that was a pleasure to read and an honour to write for, and which linked up literature and life". Its fate was to be merged into The Nation, which became The Nation and Athenaeum, in the period 1923 to 1930 edited by H. D. Henderson.
In 1923 he became the founding editor of the influential periodical, The Adelphi
Adelphi (magazine)
The Adelphi or New Adelphi was an English literary journal published between 1923 and 1955.founded by John Middleton Murry. The first issue appeared in June 1922, with issues published monthly thereafter. Between August 1927 and September 1930 it was renamed the New Adelphi and issued quarterly...
(The New Adelphi, 1927–30), which involved associations with Jack Common
Jack Common
Jack Common was a British novelist.He was born in Heaton, Newcastle upon Tyne, close to the rail-sheds where his father worked as an engine-driver...
and Max Plowman
Max Plowman
Max Plowman was a British writer and pacifist.-Life to 1918:He was born in Northumberland Park, Tottenham, in London. He left school at 16, and worked for a decade in his father's brick business. He became a journalist and poet...
. It continued in various forms until 1948. It reflected his successive interests in Lawrence, an unorthodox Marxism, pacifism, and a return to the land.
According to David Goldie, Murry and the Adelphi, and Eliot and the Criterion, were in an important rivalry by the mid-1920s, with competing definitions of literature, based respectively on romanticism
Romanticism
Romanticism was an artistic, literary and intellectual movement that originated in the second half of the 18th century in Europe, and gained strength in reaction to the Industrial Revolution...
allied to liberalism and a subjective approach, and a form of classicism
Classicism
Classicism, in the arts, refers generally to a high regard for classical antiquity, as setting standards for taste which the classicists seek to emulate. The art of classicism typically seeks to be formal and restrained: of the Discobolus Sir Kenneth Clark observed, "if we object to his restraint...
allied to traditionalism and a religious attitude. In this contest, Goldie says, Eliot emerged a clear victor, in the sense that in the 1930s London Eliot had taken the centre of the critical stage.
Critic
He reviewed for the Westminster Gazatte and then the Times Literary Supplement, from 1912. Initially he was much influenced by the philosophy of Henri BergsonHenri Bergson
Henri-Louis Bergson was a major French philosopher, influential especially in the first half of the 20th century. Bergson convinced many thinkers that immediate experience and intuition are more significant than rationalism and science for understanding reality.He was awarded the 1927 Nobel Prize...
, which he disavowed in 1913.
He was one of an identified group of post-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...
critics that included Richard Aldington
Richard Aldington
Richard Aldington , born Edward Godfree Aldington, was an English writer and poet.Aldington was best known for his World War I poetry, the 1929 novel, Death of a Hero, and the controversy arising from his 1955 Lawrence of Arabia: A Biographical Inquiry...
, 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...
, Aldous Huxley
Aldous Huxley
Aldous Leonard Huxley was an English writer and one of the most prominent members of the famous Huxley family. Best known for his novels including Brave New World and a wide-ranging output of essays, Huxley also edited the magazine Oxford Poetry, and published short stories, poetry, travel...
, 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....
, 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...
. Murry gave Huxley an editorial job at The Athenaeum.
Murry led the charge against Georgian poetry
Georgian Poetry
Georgian Poetry was the title of a series of anthologies showcasing the work of a school of English poetry that established itself during the early years of the reign of King George V of the United Kingdom....
. A leader in the 16 May 1919 edition of The Athenaeum was an early example of a reasoned attack against the Georgian style of verse; and Murry coupled this with an adversarial attitude to the London Mercury
London Mercury
The London Mercury was the name of several periodicals published in London from the seventeenth to the twentieth centuries. The earliest was a newspaper that appeared during the Exclusion Bill crisis; it lasted only 56 issues...
edited by 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 :...
. He reviewed quite harshly 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...
's Counter-Attack in 1918, despite having helped him in 1917 to draft an anti-war piece for H. W. Massingham's The Nation. In-house, however, he was not master enough to award an essay competition prize to the then-unknown Herbert Read, over the wishes of George Saintsbury
George Saintsbury
George Edward Bateman Saintsbury , was an English writer, literary historian, scholar and critic.-Biography:...
and Robert Bridges
Robert Bridges
Robert Seymour Bridges, OM, was a British poet, and poet laureate from 1913 to 1930.-Personal and professional life:...
, who preferred the poet William Orton.
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:...
admired and was influenced by Murry's early criticism. Later he was to attack Murry viciously, in the pages of Scrutiny.
On Romanticism
Murry gave his philosophy its fullest expression in his writings on Keats and Shakespeare and in an ambitiously titled volume, God: An Introduction to the Science of Metabiology. There, picking up certain concepts from his acquaintance George SantayanaGeorge Santayana
George Santayana was a philosopher, essayist, poet, and novelist. A lifelong Spanish citizen, Santayana was raised and educated in the United States and identified himself as an American. He wrote in English and is generally considered an American man of letters...
, Murry describes the project of Romanticism
Romanticism
Romanticism was an artistic, literary and intellectual movement that originated in the second half of the 18th century in Europe, and gained strength in reaction to the Industrial Revolution...
as one of inner exploration:
- "To discover that within myself which I *must obey, to gain some awareness of the law which operates in the organic world of the internal world, to feel this internal world as an organic whole working out its own destiny according to some secret vital principle, to know which acts and utterances are a liberation from obstacles and an accession of strength, to acknowledge secret loyalties which one cannot deny without impoverishment and starvation -- this is to possess one's soul indeed, and it is not easy either to do or to explain."
The upshot of this discovery results in the highest degree of ethical awareness, "an immediate knowledge of what I am and may not do." The awareness of one being "really alone" in the universe, as he put it, marks the final point of discovery which is followed by the upward ascent to spiritual life.
Murry vividly narrates this exploration as a spiritual conversion—what he describes as a "desolation" followed by "illumination" -- after the death of Katherine Mansfield (who had moved to Gurdjieff
G. I. Gurdjieff
George Ivanovich Gurdjieff according to Gurdjieff's principles and instructions, or the "Fourth Way."At one point he described his teaching as "esoteric Christianity."...
's Institute for the Harmonious Development of Man where she died).
The Adelphi
In 1930 Max PlowmanMax Plowman
Max Plowman was a British writer and pacifist.-Life to 1918:He was born in Northumberland Park, Tottenham, in London. He left school at 16, and worked for a decade in his father's brick business. He became a journalist and poet...
joined Murry and Sir Richard Rees in developing The Adelphi as a socialist, and later pacifist, monthly; Murry had founded it in 1923 as a literary journal (The New Adelphi, 1927–30); Rees edited it from 1930; Plowman took on the role in 1938. The Adelphi was closely aligned with the Independent Labour Party
Independent Labour Party
The Independent Labour Party was a socialist political party in Britain established in 1893. The ILP was affiliated to the Labour Party from 1906 to 1932, when it voted to leave...
; Jack Common
Jack Common
Jack Common was a British novelist.He was born in Heaton, Newcastle upon Tyne, close to the rail-sheds where his father worked as an engine-driver...
worked for it as circulation promoter and assistant editor in the 1930s.
Plowman co-founded in 1934 and ran the Adelphi Centre. It was an early commune
Commune (intentional community)
A commune is an intentional community of people living together, sharing common interests, property, possessions, resources, and, in some communes, work and income. In addition to the communal economy, consensus decision-making, non-hierarchical structures and ecological living have become...
, based on a farm in Langham, Essex
Langham, Essex
Langham is a small village in the north east of Essex, England.-History:There is little evidence of pre Roman occupation of what is now Langham but the Romans built a villa at the north end of the village close to the River Stour and the Roman Road from Colchester into Suffolk also ran to the east...
bought by Murry. Short-lived in its original conception, it ran a Summer School in August 1936 that was stellar: George Orwell
George Orwell
Eric Arthur Blair , better known by his pen name George Orwell, was an English author and journalist...
spoke on "An Outsider Sees the Distressed Areas" on 4 August, with Rayner Heppenstall
Rayner Heppenstall
John Rayner Heppenstall was a British novelist, poet, diarist, and a BBC radio producer.-Early life:...
in the chair. Other speakers were Steve Shaw, 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....
, Grace Rogers, J. Hampden Jackson, N. A. Holdaway (a Marxist theorist and schoolmaster, and a Director of the Centre), Geoffrey Sainsbury, Reinhold Niebuhr
Reinhold Niebuhr
Karl Paul Reinhold Niebuhr was an American theologian and commentator on public affairs. Starting as a leftist minister in the 1920s indebted to theological liberalism, he shifted to the new Neo-Orthodox theology in the 1930s, explaining how the sin of pride created evil in the world...
, Karl Polanyi
Karl Polanyi
Karl Paul Polanyi was a Hungarian philosopher, political economist and economic anthropologist known for his opposition to traditional economic thought and his book The Great Transformation...
, John Strachey, Plowman and Common.
By 1937 the commune had collapsed, and the house, 'The Oaks', was turned over to some 60 Basque
Basque people
The Basques as an ethnic group, primarily inhabit an area traditionally known as the Basque Country , a region that is located around the western end of the Pyrenees on the coast of the Bay of Biscay and straddles parts of north-central Spain and south-western France.The Basques are known in the...
refugee children under the auspices of the Peace Pledge Union
Peace Pledge Union
The Peace Pledge Union is a British pacifist non-governmental organization. It is open to everyone who can sign the PPU pledge: "I renounce war, and am therefore determined not to support any kind of war...
; they remained until 1939.
Marxist
Murry had a Marxist phase in the early 1930s. With his third marriage in 1931, he moved within NorfolkNorfolk
Norfolk is a low-lying county in the East of England. It has borders with Lincolnshire to the west, Cambridgeshire to the west and southwest and Suffolk to the south. Its northern and eastern boundaries are the North Sea coast and to the north-west the county is bordered by The Wash. The county...
, from South Acre
South Acre
South Acre is a village and civil parish in the English county of Norfolk. The village has almost disappeared, but the remnants are located about south-west of Castle Acre, north of the town of Swaffham, east of the town of King's Lynn and west of the city of Norwich...
to the Old Rectory, Larling
Larling
Larling is a village and part of the civil parish of Roundham and Larling, in the English county of Norfolk. The village is 8.5 miles east north east of Thetford, 21.4 miles west south west of Norwich and 94 miles north east of London. The nearest railway station is at Thetford for the Breckland...
, and wrote in two weeks his The Necessity of Communism. It was this identification as "mystical Marxist" that led Bert Trick (1889–1968) to introduce 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...
to Murry, in 1933. The occasion went well enough for Richard Rees to publish Thomas in the Adelphi.
He supported the small Independent Socialist Party (UK)
Independent Socialist Party (UK)
The Independent Socialist Party was a political party in the UK. It was formed in 1934 as a breakway from the Independent Labour Party in protest at the increasing power of the Revolutionary Policy Committee within the ILP....
, a regional breakaway from the Independent Labour Party
Independent Labour Party
The Independent Labour Party was a socialist political party in Britain established in 1893. The ILP was affiliated to the Labour Party from 1906 to 1932, when it voted to leave...
.
Pacifist and Christian
He was an outspoken pacifist, writing The Necessity of Pacifism (1937). He was a Sponsor of the Peace Pledge UnionPeace Pledge Union
The Peace Pledge Union is a British pacifist non-governmental organization. It is open to everyone who can sign the PPU pledge: "I renounce war, and am therefore determined not to support any kind of war...
, and editor of its weekly newspaper, Peace News
Peace News
Peace News is a pacifist magazine first published on 6 June 1936 to serve the peace movement in the United Kingdom. From later in 1936 to April 1961 it was the official paper of the Peace Pledge Union , and from 1990 to 2004 was co-published with War Resisters' International.-History:Peace News was...
, from 1940 to 1946.
Murry's opinions during this period often provoked controversy. He angered many left-wingers (including Vera Brittain
Vera Brittain
Vera Mary Brittain was a British writer, feminist and pacifist, best remembered as the author of the best-selling 1933 memoir Testament of Youth, recounting her experiences during World War I and the beginning of her journey towards pacifism.-Life:Born in Newcastle-under-Lyme, Brittain was the...
) by arguing Nazi Germany should be allowed retain control of mainland Europe. Murry believed even though Nazi rule was tyrannical, it was preferable to the horrors of total war
Total war
Total war is a war in which a belligerent engages in the complete mobilization of fully available resources and population.In the mid-19th century, "total war" was identified by scholars as a separate class of warfare...
. Murry's anti-feminism also drew criticism from feminist pacifists such as Brittain and Sybil Morrison
Sybil Morrison
Sybil Morrison was a British pacifist and a suffragist as well as being active with several other radical causes.As a young and enthusiastic suffragist, Morrison was persuaded by Emmeline Pankhurst that she was too young to go to prison. She became a pacifist in 1917 and during World War I she...
. Finally Murry's opposition to the Soviet Union
Soviet Union
The Soviet Union , officially the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics , was a constitutionally socialist state that existed in Eurasia between 1922 and 1991....
was attacked by pro-Soviet elements in the peace movement.
Murry later "renounced his pacifism in 1948 and...urged a preventative war against the Soviet Union, ending his life as a Conservative
Conservative Party (UK)
The Conservative Party, formally the Conservative and Unionist Party, is a centre-right political party in the United Kingdom that adheres to the philosophies of conservatism and British unionism. It is the largest political party in the UK, and is currently the largest single party in the House...
voter".
During this period Murry was widely known as a Christian intellectual. He had in fact considered ordination
Ordination
In general religious use, ordination is the process by which individuals are consecrated, that is, set apart as clergy to perform various religious rites and ceremonies. The process and ceremonies of ordination itself varies by religion and denomination. One who is in preparation for, or who is...
as an Anglican priest, but gave up on it after a diagnosis in 1938 of Buerger's disease
Buerger's disease
Thromboangiitis obliterans is a recurring progressive inflammation and thrombosis of small and medium arteries and veins of the hands and feet...
, coupled with doubts about his marriages (his third was then breaking up messily).
His views converged with those of Eliot; he supported a type of elitism
Elitism
Elitism is the belief or attitude that some individuals, who form an elite — a select group of people with intellect, wealth, specialized training or experience, or other distinctive attributes — are those whose views on a matter are to be taken the most seriously or carry the most...
foreshadowed by Samuel Taylor Coleridge
Samuel Taylor Coleridge
Samuel Taylor Coleridge was an English poet, Romantic, literary critic and philosopher who, with his friend William Wordsworth, was a founder of the Romantic Movement in England and a member of the Lake Poets. He is probably best known for his poems The Rime of the Ancient Mariner and Kubla...
's clerisy, and argued for by Matthew Arnold
Matthew Arnold
Matthew Arnold was a British poet and cultural critic who worked as an inspector of schools. He was the son of Thomas Arnold, the famed headmaster of Rugby School, and brother to both Tom Arnold, literary professor, and William Delafield Arnold, novelist and colonial administrator...
. In Christianity and Culture, Eliot partially supported Murry's reasoning from The Price of Leadership (1939), though stopping short of the endorsement of Arnold.
Family
Murry was married four times: to Katherine MansfieldKatherine Mansfield
Kathleen Mansfield Beauchamp Murry was a prominent modernist writer of short fiction who was born and brought up in colonial New Zealand and wrote under the pen name of Katherine Mansfield. Mansfield left for Great Britain in 1908 where she encountered Modernist writers such as D.H. Lawrence and...
in 1918, to Violet Le Maistre in 1924, to Elizabeth Cockbayne in 1932 and to Mary Gamble in 1954. With his second wife, Violet Le Maistre, he had two children: a daughter, Katherine Violet Middleton Murry who became a writer and published "Beloved Quixote, the secret life of John Middleton Murry" in 1986, and a son, John Middleton Murry, Jr.
John Middleton Murry, Jr.
John Middleton Murry, Jr. was an English writer who used the names Colin Murry and Richard Cowper.-Early life:...
, who became a writer under the names of Colin Murry and Richard Cowper. There were also two children of the third marriage.
In fiction
Aldous Huxley portrayed him as Denis Burlap in Point Counter PointPoint Counter Point
Point Counter Point is a novel by Aldous Huxley, first published in 1928. It is Huxley's longest novel, and was notably more complex and serious than his earlier fiction....
(1928). He was the model for Philip Surrogate in Graham Greene
Graham Greene
Henry Graham Greene, OM, CH was an English author, playwright and literary critic. His works explore the ambivalent moral and political issues of the modern world...
's 1934 novel It's a Battlefield; Greene did not know him personally. 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:...
wrote that Gudrun and Gerald in Lawrence's Women in Love were based on Mansfield and Murry.
Murry appears as a character in Amy Rosenthal's
Amy Rosenthal
Amy Rosenthal is a British playwright from Muswell Hill, London. She is the daughter of Jack Rosenthal and Maureen Lipman.- Plays :Rosenthal studied playwriting at the University of Birmingham...
DH Lawrence biodrama On The Rocks. In the 2008 Hampstead Theatre
Hampstead Theatre
Hampstead Theatre is a theatre in the vicinity of Swiss Cottage and Belsize Park, in the London Borough of Camden. It specialises in commissioning and producing new writing, supporting and developing the work of new writers. In 2009 it celebrates its 50 year anniversary.The original theatre was...
production Murry was played by Nick Caldecott
Nick Caldecott
Nick Caldecott is a British Theatre Actor, born in Northern Ireland on 5 June 1968.His early career began at the Royal Exchange Theatre, Manchester where he appeared in productions of Lady Windermere's Fan, the 1997 premiere of The Candidate and Ben Keaton's production of Bats, amongst other...
with Ed Stoppard
Ed Stoppard
Edmund Stoppard , often credited as Ed Stoppard, is a British actor.-Life and career:Stoppard was born in London, United Kingdom, the son of playwright Tom Stoppard and physician/author Miriam Stoppard , through whom he is related to former MP Oona King...
as Lawrence and Charlotte Emmerson as Mansfield.
Works
- Fyodor Dostoevsky: A Critical Study (1916)
- Still Life (1916) novel
- Poems: 1917-18 (1918)
- The Critic in Judgement (1919)
- The Evolution of an Intellectual (1920)
- Aspects of Literature (1920), revised edition 1945
- Cinnamon & Angelica (1920) verse drama
- Poems: 1916-1920 (1921)
- Countries of the Mind (1922)
- Pencillings (1922)
- The Problem of Style (1922)
- The Things We Are (1922) novel
- Wrap Me Up in My Aubusson Carpet (1924)
- The Voyage (1924) novel
- Discoveries (1924)
- To the Unknown God (1925)
- Keats and Shakespeare (1925)
- The Life of Jesus (1926)
- Journal of Katherine Mansfield (1927) editor
- The Letters of Katherine Mansfield (1928) editor
- Things to Come (1928)
- God: An Introduction to the Science of Metabiology (1929)
- D .H. Lawrence (1930)
- Son of Woman: The Story of D. H. Lawrence (1931)
- Studies in Keats (1931)
- The Necessity of Communism (1932)
- Reminiscences of D.H. Lawrence (1933)
- William Blake (1933)
- The Biography of Katherine Mansfield (1933) with Ruth E. Mantz
- Between Two Worlds (1935) (autobiography)
- Marxism (1935)
- Shakespeare (1936)
- The Necessity of Pacifism (1937)
- Heaven and Earth (1938)
- Heroes of Thought (1938)
- The Pledge of Peace (1938)
- The Defence of Democracy (1939)
- The Price of Leadership (1939)
- Europe in Travail (1940)
- The Betrayal of Christ by the Churches (1940)
- Christocracy (1942)
- Adam and Eve (1944)
- The Free Society (1948)
- Looking Before and After: A Collection of Essays (1948)
- The Challenge of Schweitzer (1948)
- Katherine Mansfield and Other Literary Portraits (1949)
- The Mystery of Keats (1949)
- John Clare and other Studies (1950)
- The Conquest of Death (1951)
- Community Farm (1952)
- Jonathan Swift (1955)
- Unprofessional Essays (1956)
- Love, Freedom and Society (1957)
- Not as the Scribes (1959)
- John Middleton Murry: Selected Criticism 1916-1957 (1960) editor Richard Rees
External links
- Letters from John Middleton Murry to Lord and Lady Glenavy in the George Lazarus Collection
- http://www.bartelby.com/65/mu/Murry-Jo.html
- J M Murry and Katherine Mansfield's relationship from a new biography by Kathleen Jones