John Rodker
Encyclopedia
John Rodker was a British writer, modernist poet, and publisher of some of the major modernist figures. He was born in Manchester
into a Jewish immigrant family, who moved to London while he was still young.
", a group including Isaac Rosenberg
, Samuel Weinstein
and Joseph Lefkowitz
(who coined the name in hindsight). From about 1911, when Rosenberg arrived, they began to aspire to literary careers; and in the years before 1914 Rodker was a published essayist and poet, in The New Age
of A. R. Orage and elsewhere. Other "Whitechapel Boys" were the painters David Bomberg
and Mark Gertler; they all met together at or near the Whitechapel Art Gallery.
During World War I
Rodker was a conscientious objector
. He went on the run, sheltering with the poet R. C. Trevelyan
, before being arrested in April 1917, imprisoned, and then transferred to the Home Office Work Centre, Princetown
, in the former Dartmoor
Prison. In 1919 he started the Ovid Press, a small press
which lasted about a year. It published T. S. Eliot
and Ezra Pound
(the first edition of Hugh Selwyn Mauberley
) and portfolios of drawings by Wyndham Lewis
, Henri Gaudier-Brzeska
and Edward Wadsworth
. That same year Rodker took over from Pound as foreign editor of the New York magazine The Little Review.
In the 1920s he spent time in Paris on the second edition of James Joyce
's Ulysses, at that time subject to censorship, and French translations of Joyce. He then set up the Casanova Society, for limited editions. He continued in publishing, on occult
subjects under the imprint J. Rodker also, until a bankruptcy in 1932, when (along with other such ventures such as the Fanfrolico Press) his business folded in the Depression. He was included in the 1930 Faber and Faber
collection Our Exagmination Round His Factification for Incamination of Work in Progress of Joyceans.
For a period he dropped publishing, concentrating on translation from French literature
, and agency work for Preslit, the Soviet overseas literature organ. At this time too he apparently abandoned literary ambitions for himself. In 1937, the centennial of the death of Aleksandr Pushkin
, he set up the Pushkin Press, another small press, publishing Oliver Elton
's English version of Eugene Onegin
and a trickle of other books.
The Imago Publishing Company was a separate and much more substantial venture, set up after Sigmund Freud
arrived in 1938 in London. The stocks of Freud's works left when he fled Vienna
and the Nazis
had been destroyed; Rodker with Anna Freud
worked to publish a complete edition. This was done over a dozen years, being finished in 1952. Imago was wound up in 1961.
He was posthumously awarded the Légion d'Honneur
by the government of France
.
(1890-1937); they married in May 1918. He already had a daughter, Joan
(1915-2010), from an earlier relationship with the dancer, Sonia Cohen (1885-1979). His daughter by Mary Butts was called Camilla (1920-2007). The second marriage was to Barbara McKenzie-Smith (1902-1996), a painter, resulting in a son, John Paul (born in 1937), whose name was later changed to John Paul Morrison
when his mother remarried. Their friend, Moura Budberg
, was asked to be his godmother. The third marriage was to Marianne Rais (died 1984), a Paris bookseller and daughter of his translator Ludmila Savitzky, who survived him. Joan Rodker's son, Ernest Rodker (born 1937), by the actor Gerard Heinz
, is British spokesperson for Mordechai Vanunu
and a founding member of the Battersea Power Station Community Group.
Manchester
Manchester is a city and metropolitan borough in Greater Manchester, England. According to the Office for National Statistics, the 2010 mid-year population estimate for Manchester was 498,800. Manchester lies within one of the UK's largest metropolitan areas, the metropolitan county of Greater...
into a Jewish immigrant family, who moved to London while he was still young.
Career
As a young man he was one of the "Whitechapel BoysWhitechapel Boys
The Whitechapel Boys is a name given to a loose group of Anglo-Jewish writers and artists of the early 20th century. It is named after Whitechapel, which contained one of London's main Jewish settlements and from which many of its members came...
", a group including 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...
, Samuel Weinstein
Stephen Winsten
Stephen Winsten was the name adopted by Samuel Weinstein, one of the 'Whitechapel Boys' group of young Jewish men and future writers in London's East End in the years before World War I . In the First World War he was a conscientious objector, and imprisoned in Bedford and Reading gaols...
and Joseph Lefkowitz
Joseph Leftwich
Joseph Leftwich , born Joseph Lefkowitz, was a British-Jewish critic and translator into English of Yiddish literature. He is known particularly for his 1939 anthology The Golden Peacock of Yiddish poetry, and his 1957 biography of Israel Zangwill.He was one of the 'Whitechapel Boys' group of...
(who coined the name in hindsight). From about 1911, when Rosenberg arrived, they began to aspire to literary careers; and in the years before 1914 Rodker was a published essayist and poet, in The New Age
The New Age
The New Age was a British literary magazine, noted for its wide influence under the editorship of A. R. Orage from 1907 to 1922. It began life in 1894 as a publication of the Christian Socialist movement; but in 1907 as a radical weekly edited by Joseph Clayton, it was struggling...
of A. R. Orage and elsewhere. Other "Whitechapel Boys" were the painters David Bomberg
David Bomberg
David Garshen Bomberg was an English painter, and one of the Whitechapel Boys.Bomberg was one of the most audacious of the exceptional generation of artists who studied at the Slade School of Art under Henry Tonks, and which included Mark Gertler, Stanley Spencer, C.R.W. Nevinson and Dora Carrington...
and Mark Gertler; they all met together at or near the Whitechapel Art Gallery.
During 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...
Rodker was a conscientious objector
Conscientious objector
A conscientious objector is an "individual who has claimed the right to refuse to perform military service" on the grounds of freedom of thought, conscience, and/or religion....
. He went on the run, sheltering with the poet R. C. Trevelyan
R. C. Trevelyan
Robert Calverly Trevelyan was an English poet and translator, of a traditionalist sort, and a follower of the lapidary style of Logan Pearsall Smith.-Life:...
, before being arrested in April 1917, imprisoned, and then transferred to the Home Office Work Centre, Princetown
Princetown
Princetown is a town situated on Dartmoor in the English county of Devon.In 1785, Sir Thomas Tyrwhitt, Secretary to the Prince of Wales, leased a large area of moorland from the Duchy of Cornwall estate, hoping to convert it into good farmland. He encouraged people to live in the area and suggested...
, in the former Dartmoor
Dartmoor (HM Prison)
HM Prison Dartmoor is a Category C men's prison, located in Princetown, high on Dartmoor in the English county of Devon. Its high granite walls dominate this area of the moor...
Prison. In 1919 he started the Ovid Press, a small press
Small press
Small press is a term often used to describe publishers with annual sales below a certain level. Commonly, in the United States, this is set at $50 million, after returns and discounts...
which lasted about a year. It published 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...
and Ezra Pound
Ezra Pound
Ezra Weston Loomis Pound was an American expatriate poet and critic and a major figure in the early modernist movement in poetry...
(the first edition of Hugh Selwyn Mauberley
Hugh Selwyn Mauberley
Hugh Selwyn Mauberley is a long poem by Ezra Pound. It has been regarded as a turning point in Pound's career , and its completion was swiftly followed by his departure from England. The name "Selwyn" might have been an homage to Rhymers' Club member Selwyn Image. The name and personality of the...
) and portfolios of drawings by Wyndham Lewis
Wyndham Lewis
Percy Wyndham Lewis was an English painter and author . He was a co-founder of the Vorticist movement in art, and edited the literary magazine of the Vorticists, BLAST...
, Henri Gaudier-Brzeska
Henri Gaudier-Brzeska
Henri Gaudier-Brzeska was a French sculptor who developed a rough hewn, primitive style of direct carving....
and Edward Wadsworth
Edward Wadsworth
Edward Alexander Wadsworth was an English artist, most famous for his close association with Vorticism. He painted, often in tempera, coastal views, abstracts, portraits and still-life...
. That same year Rodker took over from Pound as foreign editor of the New York magazine The Little Review.
In the 1920s he spent time in Paris on the second edition of James Joyce
James Joyce
James Augustine Aloysius Joyce was an Irish novelist and poet, considered to be one of the most influential writers in the modernist avant-garde of the early 20th century...
's Ulysses, at that time subject to censorship, and French translations of Joyce. He then set up the Casanova Society, for limited editions. He continued in publishing, on occult
Occult
The word occult comes from the Latin word occultus , referring to "knowledge of the hidden". In the medical sense it is used to refer to a structure or process that is hidden, e.g...
subjects under the imprint J. Rodker also, until a bankruptcy in 1932, when (along with other such ventures such as the Fanfrolico Press) his business folded in the Depression. He was included in the 1930 Faber and Faber
Faber and Faber
Faber and Faber Limited, often abbreviated to Faber, is an independent publishing house in the UK, notable in particular for publishing a great deal of poetry and for its former editor T. S. Eliot. Faber has a rich tradition of publishing a wide range of fiction, non fiction, drama, film and music...
collection Our Exagmination Round His Factification for Incamination of Work in Progress of Joyceans.
For a period he dropped publishing, concentrating on translation from French literature
French literature
French literature is, generally speaking, literature written in the French language, particularly by citizens of France; it may also refer to literature written by people living in France who speak traditional languages of France other than French. Literature written in French language, by citizens...
, and agency work for Preslit, the Soviet overseas literature organ. At this time too he apparently abandoned literary ambitions for himself. In 1937, the centennial of the death of Aleksandr Pushkin
Aleksandr Pushkin
Alexander Sergeyevich Pushkin was a Russian author of the Romantic era who is considered by many to be the greatest Russian poet and the founder of modern Russian literature....
, he set up the Pushkin Press, another small press, publishing Oliver Elton
Oliver Elton
Oliver Elton was an English literary scholar whose works include A Survey of English Literature in six volumes, criticism, biography, and translations from several languages including Icelandic and Russian...
's English version of Eugene Onegin
Eugene Onegin
Eugene Onegin is a novel in verse written by Alexander Pushkin.It is a classic of Russian literature, and its eponymous protagonist has served as the model for a number of Russian literary heroes . It was published in serial form between 1825 and 1832...
and a trickle of other books.
The Imago Publishing Company was a separate and much more substantial venture, set up after Sigmund Freud
Sigmund Freud
Sigmund Freud , born Sigismund Schlomo Freud , was an Austrian neurologist who founded the discipline of psychoanalysis...
arrived in 1938 in London. The stocks of Freud's works left when he fled Vienna
Vienna
Vienna is the capital and largest city of the Republic of Austria and one of the nine states of Austria. Vienna is Austria's primary city, with a population of about 1.723 million , and is by far the largest city in Austria, as well as its cultural, economic, and political centre...
and the Nazis
Nazism
Nazism, the common short form name of National Socialism was the ideology and practice of the Nazi Party and of Nazi Germany...
had been destroyed; Rodker with Anna Freud
Anna Freud
Anna Freud was the sixth and last child of Sigmund and Martha Freud. Born in Vienna, she followed the path of her father and contributed to the newly born field of psychoanalysis...
worked to publish a complete edition. This was done over a dozen years, being finished in 1952. Imago was wound up in 1961.
He was posthumously awarded the Légion d'Honneur
Légion d'honneur
The Legion of Honour, or in full the National Order of the Legion of Honour is a French order established by Napoleon Bonaparte, First Consul of the Consulat which succeeded to the First Republic, on 19 May 1802...
by the government of France
France
The French Republic , The French Republic , The French Republic , (commonly known as France , is a unitary semi-presidential republic in Western Europe with several overseas territories and islands located on other continents and in the Indian, Pacific, and Atlantic oceans. Metropolitan France...
.
Life
He married three times. His first wife was the writer Mary ButtsMary Butts
Mary Frances Butts was a British modernist writer. Her work found recognition in important literary magazines such as The Bookman and The Little Review, as well as from some of her fellow modernists, T. S. Eliot, H.D. and Bryher...
(1890-1937); they married in May 1918. He already had a daughter, Joan
Joan Rodker
Joan Rodker was a British political activist and television producer.The daughter of the modernist poet John Rodker and dancer Sonia Cohen, who placed her into care at eighteen months, where she remained until she was aged eleven...
(1915-2010), from an earlier relationship with the dancer, Sonia Cohen (1885-1979). His daughter by Mary Butts was called Camilla (1920-2007). The second marriage was to Barbara McKenzie-Smith (1902-1996), a painter, resulting in a son, John Paul (born in 1937), whose name was later changed to John Paul Morrison
John Paul Morrison
John Paul Morrison is a British-born Canadian computer programmer, and the inventor of flow-based programming . He is the author of the books Flow-Based Programming: A New Approach to Application Development and Flow-Based Programming, 2nd Edition: A New Approach to Application Development...
when his mother remarried. Their friend, Moura Budberg
Moura Budberg
Moura Zakrevskaya, variously Countess Benckendorff and Baroness Budberg was the daughter of Ignaty Platonovitch Zakrevsky , a Russian nobleman. She first married Count Johann von Benckendorff, a high-ranking Czarist diplomat, in 1911...
, was asked to be his godmother. The third marriage was to Marianne Rais (died 1984), a Paris bookseller and daughter of his translator Ludmila Savitzky, who survived him. Joan Rodker's son, Ernest Rodker (born 1937), by the actor Gerard Heinz
Gerard Heinz
Gerard Heinz , born Gerhard Hinze, was an actor. He later moved to England, where he changed his name to Gerard Heinz. He appeared in almost 60 movies , and a number of stage productions...
, is British spokesperson for Mordechai Vanunu
Mordechai Vanunu
Mordechai Vanunu ; is a former Israeli nuclear technician who, citing his opposition to weapons of mass destruction, revealed details of Israel's nuclear weapons program to the British press in 1986. He was subsequently lured to Italy by a Mossad agent, where he was drugged and kidnapped by...
and a founding member of the Battersea Power Station Community Group.
Works
- Poems (1914) first collection
- Hymns (1920) Ovid Press
- Montagnes Russes (1923) in French translation by Ludmila Savitzky
- Dartmoor (1926) in French translation by Ludmila Savitzky
- The Future of Futurism (1926)
- Adolphe 1920Adolphe 1920Written by John Rodker and published in 1929, Adolphe 1920 is a novella set in Paris, spanning eight hours in the life of its protagonist, Dick....
(1929) - Collected Poems, 1912-1925 (Hours Press, 1930)
- Memoirs of Other Fronts (1932)
- Poems & Adolphe 1920 (1996) Carcanet PressCarcanet PressCarcanet Press is a publisher, primarily of poetry, based in the United Kingdom and founded in 1969 by Michael Schmidt.Carcanet Press is now in its fourth decade. In 2000 it was named the Sunday Times millennium Small Publisher of the Year...
reissue
External links
- Article on the Whitechapel Boys
- Photo of John Rodker, James Joyce, Sylvia Beach, Cyprian Beach at Shakespeare and Co., Paris
- Anglo-Jewish poetry from Isaac Rosenberg to Elaine Feinstein by Peter Lawson: ISBN 0-85303-617-9
- John Rodker Papers at the Harry Ransom Humanities Research Center at U. of Texas, Austin
- Dominic Williams No History to Speak Of: Jewishness and Modernism in John Rodker's Memoirs of Other Fronts (1932) Journal of Modern Jewish Studies 9.3(2010): 289-310
- Entry in Rodkers genealogy web site, built using Geneweb software