Bonamy Dobree

1
Date of birth: 
02 Feb 1891
City of birth: 
London
Country of birth: 
England
Date of death: 
03 Sep 1974
Location of death: 
London
Location: 

East London College, University of London (lecturer, 1925-6); The Egyptian University, Cairo (Professor of English, 1926-9); University of Leeds (Chair of English Literature, 1936-55); City University, London (Gresham Professor in Rhetoric, 1955-6).

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About: 

Bonamy Dobrée was a literary scholar and university teacher, best known for his works on Restoration and eighteenth-century drama. In 1925-6, he taught at London University, and he became Professor of English at University of Leeds in 1936. He was educated and trained as a professional soldier, and fought with distinction during the First World War. He is also famous as a Kipling critic.

During his lectureship in London, Dobrée became a part of the Bloomsbury Group. He was a close friend of T. S. Eliot, whom he met in 1924 in Leonard Woolf’s house in Richmond, and with whom he regularly met up for lunches in London. The two men shared a love for Kipling as an artist, and in 1926 Eliot commissioned him to write an essay on Kipling for the Criterion. Among Dobrée’s other friends was Herbert Read, with whom he collaborated to edit The London Book of English Prose (1931) and English Verse (1949).

Dobrée was, in Richard Hoggard’s words, a ‘teacher and patron of young men’. Mulk Raj Anand, in his Conversations in Bloomsbury, presents a similar picture. Anand met Dobrée through his fellow student Nikhil Sen shortly after his arrival in London in 1925. Anand records a lively conversation he had with Dobrée, Sen and Gwenda Zeidmann in Museum Tavern, and a relaxing evening together with Dobrée, his wife Valentine, Sen, and Irene Rhys at Francis Meynall’s flat in the summer of 1926. In 1925, Dobrée introduced Anand to T. S. Eliot, and helped him to set up a meeting with the poet. He proved to be a good friend and mentor, despite the fact that his views on British India and admiration of Kipling occasionally offended Anand.

Connections: 

Ahmed Ali, Mulk Raj Anand, Clive Bell, Francis Birrell, Jean Cocteau, Valentine Dobrée, T. S. Eliot, E. M. Forster, Aldous Huxley, Philip Larkin, D. H. Lawrence, Wyndham Lewis, Louis MacNeice, Francis Meynall, Harold Monro, Alfred Richard Orage, Ezra Pound, Ananda Vittal Rao, Herbert Read, Irene Rhys, Nikhil Sen, George Bernard Shaw, Leonard Woolf, Virginia Woolf, Gwenda Zeidmann.

Kipling Society (Vice-President)

Network: 
Mulk Raj Anand
Involved in events: 

First World War

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Published works: 

Restoration Comedy, 1660-1720 (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1924)

Essays in Biography, 1680-1726 (London: Humphrey Milford, Oxford University Press, 1925)

(ed.) Comedies of Congreve, The World’s Classics (London: H. Milford, 1925)

Histriophone: A Dialogue on Dramatic Diction (London: L. & V. Woolf, 1925)

Timotheus: The Future of the Theatre (London: Kegan Paul & Co., 1925)

Rochester: A Conversation between Sir George Etherege and Mr. Fitzjames (London: L. & V. Woolf, 1926)

Sarah Churchill, Duchess of Marlborough (London: Gerald Howe, 1927)

(ed. with Geoffrey Webb) The Complete Works of Sir John Vanbrugh (Bloomsbury: Nonesuch Press, 1927-8)

Restoration Tragedy, 1660-1720 (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1929)

The Lamp and the Lute: Studies in Six Modern Authors (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1929)

Essays of the Year (1929-1930) (London: Argonaut, 1930)

(ed. with Herbert Read) The London Book of English Prose (London: Eyre & Spottiswoode, 1931)

Variety of Ways: Discussions on Six Authors (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1932)

(ed.) The Letters of Philip Dormer Stanhope, 4th Earl of Chesterfield (London: Eyre & Spottiswoode, 1932)

Giacomo Casanova, Chevalier de Seingalt (London: Peter Davies, 1933)

As Their Friends Saw Them: Biographical Conversations (London: Cape, 1933)

John Wesley (London: Duckworth, 1933)

Modern Prose Style (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1934)

(with G. E. Manwaring) The Floating Republic: An Account of the Mutinies at Spithead and the Nore in 1797 (London: Geoffry Bles, 1935; Penguin, 1937)

(ed.) The Letters of King George III (London: Cassell & Co., 1935) 

English Revolts (London: Herbert Joseph, 1937)

(ed.) From Anne to Victoria: Essays by Various Hands (London: Cassell & Co., 1937)

The Unacknowledged Legislator: Conversation on Literature and Politics in a Warden’s Post, 1941 (London: Allen & Unwin, 1942)

Arts’ Faculties in Modern Universities (Leeds: E. J. Arnold & Son, 1944) 

(with Herbert Read) London Book of English Verse (London: Eyre & Spottiswoode, 1949)

Alexander Pope (London: Sylvan Press, 1951)

The Broken Cistern (London: Cohen & West, 1954)

John Dryden (London: Longmans, Green & Co., 1956) 

(ed. with Louis MacNeice and Philip Larkin) New Poems, 1958 (London: Michael Joseph, 1958)

English Literature in the Early Eighteenth Century, 1700-1740 (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1959)

(ed.) Algernon Charles Swinburne: Poems (Harmondsworth: Penguin Books, 1961)

Three Eighteenth Century Figures: Sarah Churchill, John Wesley, Giacomo Casanova (London: Oxford University Press, 1962)

(ed.) Shakespeare: The Writer and his Work (London: Longmans, 1964)

Rudyard Kipling: Realist and Fabulist (London: Oxford University Press, 1967)

Milton to Ouida: A Collection of Essays (London: Cass, 1970)

Contributions to periodicals: 

Egoist (‘Impression’, 3.6, 1 June 1916, p. 95)

Egoist (‘Court-Martial’, 3.7, 1 July 1916, p. 111)

New Statesman (‘Drama and Values’, 14.344, 1919, pp. 161-2)

Nation and Athenaeum (‘Young Voltaire: A Conversation between William Congreve and Alexander Pope, Twickenham, September 1726’, 15.5, 1926, pp. 179-80)

New Criterion (‘The World of Dean Inge’, 5.1, January 1927, pp. 109-14)

New Criterion (review of Rudyard Kipling, Debits and Credits, 5.1, January 1927, pp. 149-51)

Monthly Criterion (review of Wyndham Lewis, The Lion and the Fox, 5.3, June 1927, pp. 339-43)

Monthly Criterion (‘Rudyard Kipling’, 6.6, December 1927, pp. 499-515)

Monthly Criterion (review of D. H. Lawrence, The Woman Who Rode Away, 8.30, September 1928, pp. 139-41)

Spectator (review of Leonard Woolf, After the Deluge, 147.5393, 7 November 1931)

Spectator (review of Sacheverell Sitwell, Spanish Baroque Art, 147.5378, 25 July 1931, pp. 132-3)

Spectator (‘Travel in Egypt’, 29 October 1932, p. 592)

Criterion (review of Col. P. G. Elgood, Bonaparte’s Adventure in Egypt, 11.44, April 1932, pp. 557-60)

Criterion (‘Macaulay’, 12.49, July 1933, pp. 593-604)

Spectator (‘Mr. Bernard Shaw’, 152.5512, 16 February 1934)

Spectator (‘The Shavian Situation’, 153.5533, 1934, p. 46)

Criterion (review of Ananda Vittal Rao, A Minor Augustan, 14.55, January 1935)

ELH (‘Milton and Dryden: A Comparison and Contrast in Poetic Ideas and Poetic Method’, 3.1, March 1936, pp. 83-100)

Southern Review (‘The Plays of Eugene O'Neill’, 2, 1937, pp. 435-46)

Criterion (review of T. H. Wintringham, Mutiny, 14.64, April 1937, p. 573)

Spectator (review of Ahmed Ali, Twilight in Delhi, 165.5863, 8 November 1940)

Spectator (review of Mulk Raj Anand, Across the Black Waters, 165.5865, 22 November 1940)

Spectator ('Virginia Woolf: Her Art as a Novelist', 174.6088, 2 March 1945)

Sewanee Review (‘Mr. O’Neill’s Last Play’, 56, 1948, pp. 118-26)

Sewanee Review (‘The Confidential Clerk, by T. S. Eliot’, 62, 1954, pp. 117-31)

Sewanee Review (‘The London Stage’, review of T. S. Eliot, The Elder Statesman, 67, 1959, pp. 109-17)

Sewanee Review (‘Durrell’s Alexandrian Series’, 69, 1961, pp. 61-79)

Kipling Journal (‘Rudyard Kipling: Poet’, 32.156, 1965, pp. 33-41)

Sewanee Review (‘T. S. Eliot: A Personal Reminiscence’, 74.1, January - March 1966, pp. 85-108)

Shenandoah: The Washington & Lee University Review (‘W. H. Auden’, 18.2, 1967, pp. 18-22)

Malahat Review: An International Quarterly of Life and Letters (‘The Poems of Thomas Hardy: Lyric or Elegiac?’, 3, 1967, pp. 77-92)

Malahat Review (with Herbert Read, ‘Beauty - or the Beast! A Conversation in a Tavern’, 1969, pp. 178-86)

Reviews: 

The Times, 19 August 1925, p. 10

Richard Aldington, New Criterion 4.2, April 1926, pp. 381-4 (Restoration Comedy: 1660-1720; Essays in Biography, 1680-1726; Comedies of Congreve; Histriophone; Timotheus: The Future of the Theatre)

Mario Praz, Criterion 8.30, September 1928, pp. 153-6 (The Complete Works of Sir John Vanbrugh)

Sherard Vines, Criterion 11.44, April 1932, pp. 529-32 (The London Book of English Prose)

Williard Thorp, Criterion 11.45, July 1932, pp. 749-51 (Variety of Ways: Discussion of Six Authors)

Keith Feiling, Criterion 12.46, October 1932, pp. 118-21 (The Letters of Philip Dormer Stanhope)

M. A., Criterion 13.50, October 1933, p. 172 (Giacomo Casanova, Chevalier de Seingalt)

T. C. Wilson, Criterion 14.55, January 1935, pp. 337-40 (Modern Prose Style)

John Garrett, Criterion 15.59, January 1936, pp. 137-9 (The Floating Republic)

Michael de la Bedoyere, Criterion 15.60, April 1936 (The Letters of King George III)

Secondary works: 

Butt, John (ed.) Of Books and Humankind: Essays and Poems presented to Bonamy Dobrée (London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1964)

Morrish, P. S., ‘Bonamy Dobrée, Theatre Critic of The Nation & Athenaeum’, Notes and Queries 29 (1982), pp. 344-5

Sherbo, Arthur, ‘Restoring Bonamy Dobrée: Additions to the Canon of His Writings’, Notes and Queries 49(247).1 (March 2002), pp. 96-7

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Example: 

Mulk Raj Anand, Conversations in Bloomsbury (Delhi: OUP, 1995), p. 50

Content: 

Anand met Bonamy Dobrée and T. S. Eliot for lunch in the Etoile.

Extract: 

‘I don’t agree with defiance of law,’ Eliot said. ‘The British have done much good in India.’

I looked at him, then bent my head down. After a while, Dobrée said: ‘That is what I have told this rebel. Look at the unity we have given you. And the railways.’

I was perspiring under the collar, through the humiliation of having been flogged by the police. I had been cultivating the will to decide on the struggle against, what Gandhi called, the satanic British.

And now I wanted, even through my bluff and bluster, to cultivate the vision of freedom for India – freedom against all the enemies, the family, the brotherhood, the stupid lazy people and the conformists.

‘I am going to rewrite Kipling’s Kim,’ I said at last, ‘from the opposite point of view.’

‘Some hopes!’ Dobrée said.

He sensed my discomfiture and offered us more coffee.

Relevance: 

The extract gives insights into Dobrée’s relationship with Mulk Raj Anand, and his views of the place of India in the British empire and of Indian nationalism.

Archive source: 

Papers of Professor Bonamy Dobrée, Leeds University Library Special Collections

Correspondence, Hogarth Press Archives, University of Reading

Correspondence, King’s College Archive Centre, Cambridge University