publishing

Chatto & Windus

About:

Chatto & Windus, a leading publisher of books from the Victorian era, became an important platform for South Asian Anglophone writers. Founded in 1855 by John Camden Hotten, it was sold in 1873 to his junior partner Andrew Chatto, who took on the poet W. E. Windus as a partner. Chatto first published the Indo-Irish writer Aubrey Menen’s novel The Prevalence of Witches (1947). The company continued to publish his works, and went on to publish a significant number of South Asian writers in English. Chatto & Windus’ interest in publishing South Asians appears to date from its acquisition of a controlling interest in Leonard and Virginia Woolf's Hogarth Press (founded in 1917) in 1947, given the latter's close connection and support of South Asian Anglophone writers. Cecil Day Lewis, one of Hogarth’s prize authors, became an editor at Chatto and edited Attia Hosain’s novels. Putnam, later Bodley Head, merged with Chatto in the late 1960s. Chatto then merged with Jonathan Cape (1969) and Virago (1982). The companies retained editorial control until Random House purchased the group in 1987.

Published works:

Chaudhuri, Nirad, The Continent of Circe (1965)

Hosain, Attia, Phoenix Fled (1953)

Hosain, Attia, Sunlight on a Broken Column (1961)

Markandaya, Kamala, Two Virgins (1974)

Menen, Aubrey, The Prevalence of Witches (1947)

Menen, Aubrey, Dead Man in a Silver Market: An Autobiographical Essay on National Prides (1954)

Narayan, R. K., The Ramayana (1973)

Narayan, R. K., My Days (1975)

Sahgal, Nayantara, Storm in Chandigarh (1969)

Singh, Khushwant, Train to Pakistan (1956)

Secondary works:

Ranasinha, Ruvani, South Asian Writers in Twentieth-Century Britain:Culture in Translation (Oxford: Clarendon, 2007)

Warner, Oliver, Chatto & Windus: A Brief Account of the Firm's Origin, History and Development (London: Chatto & Windus, 1973)

Date began:

01 Jan 1855

Key Individuals' Details:

Attia Hosain, John Camden Hotten, Cecil Day Lewis, Aubrey Menen, W. E. Windus.

Archive source:

Chatto & Windus Archive, University of Reading

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literature

publishers

publishing

Lawrence & Wishart

About:

Lawrence & Wishart is a London-based publishing company. It was formed in 1936 through the merger of the Communist Party’s official publisher, Martin Lawrence, and the liberal and anti-fascist family-owned publisher Wishart. From its foundation, it specialized in publishing left-wing political fiction, drama and poetry, as well as non-fiction such as working-class histories and the works of Karl Marx, in the context of the economic depression, and the rise of fascism and the Second World War. It also produced the bi-annual literary anthology New Writing. After the War, it went on to publish early work by renowned leftist scholars including Eric Hobsbawm and Edward Thompson, and to translate the work of Antonio Gramsci.

In 1935, Wishart had published Mulk Raj Anand’s novel The Untouchable after it was rejected by some nineteen publishing houses. Its acceptance by Wishart was no doubt in part a product of the novel’s endorsement by E. M. Forster. Two of Anand’s subsequent novels were then taken on by Lawrence & Wishart, as was the work of Indian Communist Rajani Palme Dutt’s, whose brother Clemens translated work by Marx and Engels for the firm.

Published works:

A selection of works published from 1936 to 1950:

Anand, Mulk Raj, Coolie (1936)

Anand, Mulk Raj, Two Leaves and a Bud (1937)

Beauchamp, Joan, Women Who Work (1937)

Britain Without Capitalists (1936)

Caudwell, Christopher, Illusion and Reality (1946)

Chen, Jack, Japan and the Pacific Theatre of War (1942)

Cornforth, Maurice, Science versus Idealism (1946)

Dutt, Rajani Palme, Britain in the World Front (1942)

Dutt, Rajani Palme, Britain’s Crisis of Empire (1950)

Engels, Friedrich, Dialectics of Nature, trans. Clemens Palme Dutt, preface by J. D. S. Haldane (1940)

Fox, Ralph, France Faces the Future (1936)

Gorky, Maksim, Culture and the People (1939)

Haldane, J. B. S., Science and Everyday Life (1939)

Klingender, Francis Donald, Marxism and Modern Art (1943)

Kuczynski, Jurgen, Hunger and Work: Statistical Studies (1938)

Lenin, V. I., Selected Works (1936-8)

Lenin, V. I., What is to be Done? (1944)

Lenin, V. I., Imperialism: The Highest Stage of Capitalism (1948)

Lindsay, Jack, A Handbook of Freedom (1939)

Marx, Karl, Selected Works, ed. by Clemens Palme Dutt (1942)

Marx, Karl and Engels, Friedrich, Selected Correspondence, 1846-1895 (1941)

Marx, Karl and Engels, Friedrich, The Communist Manifesto [1933] (1948)

Pollitt, Harry, Serving My Time (1940)

Reeves, Joseph, A History of Rochdale Cooperation, 1844-1944 (19434)

Slater, Montagu, New Way Wins (1937)

Stalin, Joseph, Foundations of Leninism (1940)

Stalin, Joseph, Marxism and the National and Colonial Question (1947)

Wolton, Douglas G., Whither South Africa? (1947)

Date began:

01 Jan 1936

Precise date began unknown:

Connections:

Mulk Raj Anand, Clemens Palme Dutt, Rajani Palme Dutt, Friedrich Engels, E. M. Forster, Ralph Fox, J. B. S. Haldane, V. I. Lenin, Jack Lindsay, Karl Marx, Harry Pollitt, Montagu Slater, Joseph Stalin.

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Penguin Books

About:

Originally an imprint of the publishing firm Bodley Head, Penguin Books was established by Allen Lane in 1935 and pioneered the paperback book, bringing affordable fiction and non-fiction to the British public.

V. K. Krishna Menon worked as general editor on the Pelican list from its inception in 1936 until 1938. Accounts of the extent and nature of his involvement in this non-fiction imprint vary, but it is generally acknowledged that he played a significant part in its establishment. In a 1967 history of the company, Victor Weybright describes Menon visiting Lane in the crypt (Penguin’s first premises) with written permission from Bernard Shaw for Penguin to publish a paperback edition of his Intelligent Woman’s Guide to Socialism. Lane, who had, by coincidence, just overheard a customer in a shop mistakenly referring to a Penguin as a ‘Pelican’ and been struck by the appeal of this as an additional brand name, immediately decided to publish Shaw’s work as the first title of the brand-new Pelican list. Appointing Menon as general editor, Lane also asked the economist H. L. Beales and W. E. Williams, Secretary of the British Institute for Adult Education, to join the team as editorial advisors. The list, which consisted of paperback editions of existing titles as well as original titles, crossed disciplinary boundaries, extending from art to history to politics to science, and included work by eminent writers and scholars such as H. G. Wells, Harold Laski, Roger Fry, Leonard Woolf, Clive Bell and Sigmund Freud.

Correspondence between Menon and Lane throughout 1938 documents the gradual deterioration of the relationship between the two men and the eventual ejection of Menon from the company in December 1938. Penguin published K. S. Shelvankar’s controversial The Problem of India in 1941. Fiercely critical of the colonial government in India and considered to be dangerously polemical, the book was banned in India. Mulk Raj Anand’s Untouchable and Coolie were published in paperback by Penguin in 1940 and 1945, respectively, and in 1944 a second edition of US-based Indian author Dham Gopal Mukerji’s award-winning Gay-Neck was published by Puffin Story Books.

Published works:

The first 30-40 titles of the Pelican list were edited by V. K. Krishna Menon. These are:

Allen, F. L., Only Yesterday (1)

Allen, F. L., Only Yesterday (2)

Bell, Clive, Civilization

Cole, G. D. H., Practical Economics

Cole, G. D. H., Socialism in Evolution

Crowther, J. G., An Outline of the Universe (1)

Crowther, J. G., An Outline of the Universe (2)

Dobree, Bonamy and Manwaring, G. E., The Floating Republic

Fabre, J. H., Social Life in the Insect World

Freud, Sigmund, Psychopathology of Everyday Life

Fry, Roger, Vision and Design

Haldane, J. B. S., The Inequality of Man

Halevy, Elie, A History of the English People in 1815 (1)

Halevy, Elie, A History of the English People in 1815 (2)

Halevy, Elie, A History of the English People in 1815 (3)

Harrison, G. B. (ed.), A Book of English Poetry: Chaucer to Rossetti

Harrison, G. B., Introducing Shakespeare

Huxley, Julian, Essays in Popular Science

Huxley Julian, et al., We Europeans

Jeans, James, The Mysterious Universe

Lambert, R. S., Art in England

Laski, Harold, Liberty in the Modern State

Massingham, H. J. and Hugh (eds), The Great Victorians (1)

Perry, W. J., The Growth of Civilization

Power, Eileen, Medieval People

Shaw, George Bernard, The Intelligent Woman’s Guide to Socialism, Capitalism and Sovietism (1)

Shaw, George Bernard, The Intelligent Woman’s Guide to Socialism, Capitalism and Sovietism (2)

Stapledon, Olaf, Last and First Men

Sullivan, J. W. N., Limitations of Science

Sullivan, J. W. N., The Bases of Modern Science

Tawney, R. H., Religion and the Rise of Capitalism

Webb, Beatrice, My Apprenticeship

Wells, H. G., A Short History of the World (reissued in Pelican after appearing in Penguin series)

Whitehead, A. N., Science and the Modern World

Woolf, Leonard, After the Deluge

Woolley, Leonard, Digging up the Past

Woolley, Leonard, Ur of the Chaldees

Titles by South Asian writers published by Penguin are:

Anand, Mulk Raj, Untouchable (Penguin, 1940; first published by Lawrence & Wishart, 1935)

Anand, Mulk Raj, Coolie (Penguin, 1945; first published by Lawrence & Wishart, 1936)

Mukerji, Dham Gopal, Gay-Neck (Puffin Story Books, 1944; first published by J. M. Dent, 1928)

Shelvankar, K. S., The Problem of India (Penguin Specials, 1940)

Example:

Letter from Mulk Raj Anand to Mr Maynard of Penguin, dated 20 October 1940, Penguin Books Archive, University of Bristol

Secondary works:

Edwards, Russell and Hare, Steve (eds), Pelican Books: A Sixtieth Anniversary Celebration (Miscellany 12, Penguin Collectors' Society, 1997)

George, T. J. S., Krisha Menon: A Biography (London: Jonathan Cape, 1963)

Hare, Steve (ed.), Penguin Portrait: Allen Lane and the Penguin Editors, 1935-1970 (London: Penguin, 1995)

Lewis, Jeremy, Penguin Special: The Life and Times of Allen Lane (London: Penguin, 2005)

Penguin Books, Penguins Progress, 1935-60 (Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1960)

Weybright, Victor, The Making of a Publisher (London: Weidenfeld & Nicholson, 1968)

Content:

The editorial files of Anand's Untouchable contain letters between the author and Penguin staff, suggesting a good relationship with Allen Lane and Eunice Frost. Anand's view of the political function of literature is evident from some of the content of the correspondence, as is his involvement with a range of literary and cultural projects and events in Britain.

Date began:

01 Aug 1935

Extract:

Italics seem, from my experience, to confuse the English reader and to increase the gulf between him and my alien subject matter, when all my efforts are calculated to show, not how queer the Indians are but how human and like everyone else, in spite of these particular horrors.

Precise date began unknown:

Key Individuals' Details:

Relevance:

Anand's request for Penguin to romanize the foreign words in his novel is a strikingly early example of an editorial debate more commonly associated with the late twentieth century. His rationale for this request underlines his belief in the social and political function of literature.

Connections:

Mulk Raj Anand, H. L. Beales, Clive Bell, Bonamy Dobree, Sigmund Freud, Eunice Frost, Roger Fry, H. B. S. Haldane, Allen Lane, Harold Laski, Ethel Mannin, Aubrey Menen, V. K. Krishna Menon, Peter Chalmers Mitchell, Dham Gopal Mukerji, Bernard Shaw, K. S. Shelvankar, Beatrice Webb, H. G. Wells, Leonard Woolf, W. E. Williams.

Archive source:

Penguin Books Archive, University of Bristol

Location

All Souls Church

Langham Place

London, W1B 3DA

United Kingdom

See map: Google Maps

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Hogarth Press

About:

The Hogarth Press was founded by Leonard and Virginia Woolf in March 1917 in their house (Hogarth House) in Richmond, London. They published their first pamphlet in July of that year. It consisted of two short stories, Virginia's 'The Mark on the Wall' and Leonard's 'Three Jews'. The pamphlet was sold by subscription only, a practice that continued until 1923. Soon the Press went on to publish Katherine Mansfield's 'Prelude', Virginia's Kew Gardens and T. S. Eliot's Poems; James Joyce's Ulysses, however, was turned down. In 1922 the Woolfs published their first full-length book, Virginia's Jacob's Room, and in 1923 T. S. Eliot's The Waste Land, before moving the Press to the basement of their house in Tavistock Square. In 1924, at the suggestion of their friend James Strachey, the Press agreed to publish Freud's collected papers.

In 1929, Hogarth published G. S. Dutt's A Woman of India: Being the Life of Saroj Nalini (Founder of the Women's Institute Movement in India), with a foreword by Rabindranath Tagore. During the 1930s, the Press grew immensely popular and assistants were brought in. Among them was John Lehmann who edited the anthology New Signatures (1932) which included poems by W. H. Auden, Julian Bell, C. Day Lewis, Richard Eberhart, William Empson and Stephen Spender. In 1938, Lehmann edited the collection New Series to which the writer Mulk Raj Anand contributed in autumn 1938. Also that year, Hogarth published Rajani Palme Dutt's The Political and Social Doctrine of Communism. In 1940, Ahmed Ali's Twilight in Delhi was published, and Lehmann edited the Folios of New Writing which also contained writing by Ali.

The Hogarth Press continued to grow under Lehmann who became a partner after Virginia's death in 1941. Disagreements between Leonard Woolf and John Lehmann eventually led to Woolf buying Lehmann out by selling Lehmann's half share to Chatto & Windus. The Hogarth Press then became a subsidiary of Chatto & Windus and was eventually bought by Random House UK.

Published works:

Below is a selection of published works by South Asians:

Ali, Ahmed, 'Morning in Delhi', in Folios of New Writing, ed. by John Lehmann (1940), pp. 137-51

Ali, Ahmed, Twilight in Delhi (1940)

Anand, Mulk Raj, 'Duty', in New Writing, New Series, ed. by John Lehmann (1938), pp. 208-12

Hsiao Ch'ien, 'The New China Turns to Ibsen', in Daylight: European Arts and Letters Yesterday: Today: Tomorrow (1941), pp. 167-74

Dutt, G. S., A Woman of India: Being the Life of Saroj Nalini (Founder of the Women's Institute Movement in India) (1929)

Dutt, Rajani Palme, The Political and Social Doctrine of Communism (1938)

Secondary works:

Kennedy, Richard, A Boy at the Hogarth Press (London: The Whittington Press, 1972)

Lehmann, John, Thrown to the Woolfs (London: Weidenfeld & Nicolson, 1978)

Rhein, Donna E., The Handprinted Books of Leonard and Virginia Woolf at the Hogarth Press, 1917-1932 (Ann Arbor: UMI Research, 1985)

Rosenbaum, S. P., Leonard and Virginia Woolf at the Hogarth Press (Austin, Texas: College of Liberal Arts, Harry Ransom Humanities Research Center, University of Texas at Austin, 1995)

Spater, George, and Parsons, Ian, A Marriage of True Minds: An Intimate Portrait of Leonard and Virginia Woolf (London: Cape, 1977; London: Hogarth Press, 1977)

Virginia Woolf and the Hogarth Press: From the Collection of William Beekman, Exhibited at the Grolier Club (New York: Grolier Club, 2004)

Willis, John H., Leonard and Virginia Woolf as Publishers: The Hogarth Press, 1917-41 (Charlottesville and London: University Press of Virginia, 1992)

Woolf, Leonard, Beginning Again: An Autobiography of the Years 1911-1918 (London: Hogarth Press, 1964)

Woolf, Leonard, Downhill all the Way: An Autobiography of the Years 1919-1939 (London: Hogarth Press, 1967)

Woolf, Leonard, The Journey Not the Arrival Matters: An Autobiography of the Years 1939-1969 (London: Hogarth Press, 1969)

Woolf, Leonard, Letters of Leonard Woolf, ed. by Frederic Spotts (San Diego: Brace Harcourt Jovanovich, 1989)

Woolf, Virginia, The Diary of Virginia Woolf, 5 vols, ed. by Anne Olivier Bell and Andrew McNeillie (London: Hogarth Press, 1977-1984)

Woolf, Virginia, The Letters of Virginia Woolf, 6 vols, ed. by Nigel Nicolson and Joanne Trautmann (London: Hogarth Press, 1975-1980)

Woolmer, James Howard, A Checklist of the Hogarth Press, 1917-1938 (London: Hogarth Press, 1976)

Woolmer, James Howard, A Checklist of the Hogarth Press, 1917-1946 (Winchester: St Paul's Bibliographies, 1986)

Date began:

01 Mar 1917

Precise date began unknown:

Key Individuals' Details:

John Lehmann (editor and later partner), Leonard Woolf (founder), Virginia Woolf (founder).

Connections:

Ahmed Ali, Mulk Raj Anand, Hsiao Ch'ien, Rajani Palme Dutt, T. S. Eliot, Stephen Spender.

Archive source:

Correspondence between Leonard Woolf and John Lehmann, Harry Ransom Humanities Research Center, University of Texas, Austin

Correspondence between Leonard Woolf and John Lehmann, Victoria College Library, University of Toronto

Papers, University of Reading

Papers, University of Sussex

Locations

37 Mecklenburgh Square

London, WC1N 2AF

United Kingdom

See map: Google Maps

52 Tavistock Square

London, WC1H 9HB

United Kingdom

See map: Google Maps

Hogarth House

Paradise Road

Richmond, SW9 1SA

United Kingdom

See map: Google Maps

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New India Publishing Co

About:

Relatively little is known about this publishing venture. It is probable that it was founded by D. P. Chaudhuri who was also deputy editor of Asian Horizon (1948-1950). Mulk Raj Anand and Iqbal Singh were the editors of one of its few known outputs, Indian Short Stories (1946). Its other outputs include an anthology of poems by Indians in English, including work by Manmohan Ghose, Sarojini Naidu and G. K. Chettur, and a translation of Tagore's Farewell, My Friend. The founding editors of the company were keen that there should be a publisher of work by Indians in London that was actually run by Indians - and that Indians should be interpreting and evaluating the 'West' for their fellow countrymen, as well as interpreting the 'East' for Britons and the 'West'. They aimed for as wide a range of work on Indian culture and civilization as possible, incorporating all 'fields of thought' represented by both established and younger Indian writers, as well as by Chinese, 'Persian' and 'Arabian' writers.

Published works:

Anand, Mulk Raj and Singh, Iqbal (eds), Indian Short Stories (1946)

Gangulee, Nagendranath, Sher Shah: The Bengal Tiger (1946)

Kabir, Humayun, Men and Rivers (1947)

Kabraji, Fredoon (ed.), This Strange Adventure: An Anthology of Poems in English by Indians, 1828-1946 (1947)

Tagore, Rabindranath, Farewell, My Friend, trans. by K. R. Kripalani (1949)

Example:

Programme of the New India Publishing Company Limited, endpapers of Anand, Mulk Raj and Singh, Iqbal (eds), Indian Short Stories (1946)

Content:

This is the manifesto of the company, stating its objectives and its scope.

Date began:

01 Jan 1946

Extract:

For a long time past there has been felt the need of an Indian Publishing House in London organised by Indians. There are Indian organisations in Great Britain which issue from time to time pamphlets, leaflets and news bulletins, but these are for the most part of ephemeral character. These efforts should be supplemented by literature of permanent value written by Indians on various aspects of Indian culture, civilization and particularly on modern trends of thought in relation to Indian renaissance.

But the basis of free and creative cooperation between India and the Western world cannot be securely established without a closer understanding of all progressive movements outside India, the development of which should be interpreted by Indians themselves. In other words, there should be ample facilities not only for the interpretation of Indian problems for the West by Indians but also for their own critical evaluation of the West for the East. Only by such two-way traffic of disseminating ideas can we achieve a definite synthesis between them.

Precise date began unknown:

Key Individuals' Details:

Mulk Raj Anand (editor of Indian Short Stories), D. P. Chaudhuri (founding editor), Enid Furlonger (illustrator of Sher Shah), Nagendranath Gangulee (author of Sher Shah, resident in London in 1945), Fredoon Kabraji (editor of This Strange Adventure), Iqbal Singh (editor of Indian Short Stories).

Relevance:

This passage from the manifesto is evidence of the assertiveness of the Indian writers involved in the foundation of this company. Their emphasis on the need for a publishing house in Britain run by Indians is suggestive of a perception of their status in Britain as equal, endowing them with the right to compete with British publishers on British soil. Indeed their clear advocacy of 'free and creative cooperation between Britain and the Western world', and of the need for 'Indian themselves' to interpret 'progressive movements' and other events in the West, further underlines their understanding of the relationship between India and Britain as one of equals, forged by a 'two-way' dissemination of ideas.

Connections:

K. Ahmed Abbas, Ahmed Ali, H. N. Brailsford, G. K. Chettur, Ananda Kentish Coomaraswamy, Henry Derozio, Aru Dutt, Romesh Chunder Dutt, Toru Dutt, Aurobindo Ghose, Manmohan Ghose, Humayun Kabir, Dhan Gopal Mukerji, Sarojini Naidu, Balachandra Rajan, Raja Ratnam, Alagu Subramaniam, Rabindranath Tagore, M. J. Tambimuttu, J. Vijaya-Tunga.

Date ended:

01 Jan 1950

Precise date ended unknown:

Location

17 Irving Street Leicester Square

London, WC2H 7AU

United Kingdom

See map: Google Maps

Tags for Making Britain:

freedom of expression

Progressive Writers' Association

About:

The Progressive Writers’ Association was established in London in 1935 by Indian writers and intellectuals, with the encouragement and support of some British literary figures. It was in the Nanking Restaurant in central London that a group of writers, including Mulk Raj Anand, Sajjad Zaheer and Jyotirmaya Ghosh drafted a manifesto which stated their aims and objectives: ‘Radical changes are taking place in Indian society…We believe that the new literature of India must deal with the basic problems of our existence to-day – the problems of hunger and poverty, social backwardness, and political subjection. All that drags us down to passivity, inaction and un-reason we reject as re-actionary. All that arouses in us the critical spirit, which examines institutions and customs in the light of reason, which helps us to act, to organize ourselves, to transform, we accept as progressive’ (Anand, pp. 20-21). Comprising mainly Oxford, Cambridge and London university students, the group met once or twice a month in London to discuss and criticize articles and stories.

The PWA built on the foundation of the controversial collection of stories titled Anghare, published in 1932 and edited by Sajjad Zaheer, with contributions also from Ahmed Ali, Mahmuduzzafar and Rashid Jahan. This volume, which provoked considerable hostility in India and was eventually banned because of its political radicalism and also, according to some, obscenity, was influenced by the radical and literary avant-garde movements in Britain, where both Zaheer and Ali had spent some time studying.

In his memoirs, Zaheer claims the leftist writer Ralph Fox was particularly influential in encouraging the formal organization of the group in London. Anand and Zaheer’s attendance of the International Congress for the Defence of Culture in Paris on 21-6 June 1935, with its emphasis on freedom of expression and the interrelationship between art and society, was also an influence. On the peripheries of this congress, Anand went on to present an address at the Conference of the International Association of Writers for the Defence of Culture in London on 19-23 June 1936. The meeting was organized by the International Association of Writers for the Defence of Culture which aimed to stimulate translations and seek publication of works which were censored in the country of the author, as well as to set up a foundation for a world award, and fight, through culture, against war and fascism. Anand and Zaheer internalized much of what was said at these congresses which shaped the central issues of concern for the PWA.

In 1935, Zaheer left London for India via Paris taking the beginnings of the organization back to India for development. The All-India Progressive Writers’ Association had its official inaugural meeting in Lucknow on 9-10 April 1936, with the writer Premchand presiding. The organization continued to campaign for independence and advocate social equality through their writings. It was unfortunately riven by tensions between a desire to strengthen the links of the organization with Communism, and an opposition to this. Those in the latter camp, such as Ahmed Ali, voiced the dangers of the reduction of literature to a vehicle for propaganda. The PWA continued after independence but is said to have lost some of its energy in its later years.

Published works:

New Indian Literature 1 (London, 1936)

Zaheer, Sajjad (ed.) Anghare (‘Burning Coals’) (1932)

Example:

Zaheer, Sajjad, ‘Reminiscences’, in S. Pradhan (ed.) Marxist Cultural Movement in India, Vol. 1 (Calcutta: National Book Agency, 1979)

Other names:

Progressive Writers' Group

All-India Progressive Writers' Association

Secondary works:

Anand, Mulk Raj, ‘On the Progressive Writers’ Movement’, in S. Pradhan (ed.) Marxist Cultural Movement in India, Vol. 1 (Calcutta: National Book Agency, 1979)

Coppola, Carlo, ‘The All-India Progressive Writers Association: The European Phase’, in Coppola (ed.) Marxist Influences and South Asian Literature, Vol. 1 (Winter 1974; Asian Studies Center, Michigan State University, East Lansing, Michigan), pp. 1-34

Gopal, Priyamvada, Literary Radicalism in India: Gender, Nation and the Transition to Independence (London and New York: Routledge, 2005)

Zaheer, Sajjad, The Light: The History of the Movement for Progressive Literature in the Indo-Pakistan Subcontinent (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2006)

Content:

In this piece, Zaheer recalls the formation and development of the Progressive Writers’ Association.

Date began:

24 Nov 1934

Extract:

We knew from the beginning that living in London we could neither influence Indian literature nor create any good literature ourselves. Side by side with our realising the advantages of forming the association in London, this feeling was strengthened. A few exiled Indians could do little more than draw up plans among themselves and produce an orphanlike literature under the influence of European culture. The most important thing that we learnt in Europe was that a progressive writers’ movement could bear fruits only when it is propagated in various languages and when the writers of India realise the necessity of this movement and put into practice its aims and objects. The best that the London Association could do was to put us in contact with the progressive literary movements abroad, to represent Indian literature in the West and to interpret for India the thoughts of Western writers and the social problems which were profoundly influencing Western literature.

Key Individuals' Details:

Ahmed Ali (founding member, contributed to Anghare), Mulk Raj Anand (founding member, drafted manifesto), Hajrah Begum, Prem Chand (first President), Ismat Chugtai, Anil D’Silva, Faiz Ahmed Faiz, Jyotirmaya Ghosh (founding member, helped to draft manifesto), Rashid Jahan (founding member, contributed to Anghare), Mahmuduzzafar (founding member, contributed to Anghare), Saadat Hasan Manto, Taseer (attended London meetings), Sajjad Zaheer (founding member, edited Anghare and helped to draft manfesto).

Relevance:

This passage outlines both the importance and the limitations of the location of the foundation of the PWA in London. London was formative to the Association in so far as the European avant-garde movement encountered there by its protagonists, as well as European political events (i.e., the rise of Fascism), instigated and helped to shape its development. Further, the distance of London from India arguably enabled the articulation of a more radical and critical politics than would have been possible within India. However, Zaheer’s notion of an ‘orphanlike’ literature, or a literature in exile, highlights the problematic detachment of the production in Britain of a socially and politically engaged Indian literature from its key concerns and preoccupations.

Connections:

Suniti Kumar Chatterji, E. M. Forster, Ralph Fox, Attia Hosain, Aldous Huxley, Mohammed Ali Jinnah, Herbert Read, John Strachey.

Date ended:

01 Jan 1956

Precise date ended unknown:

Location

Nanking Restaurant

Denmark Street

London, WC2H 8LX

United Kingdom

See map: Google Maps

Involved in events details:

Founding meeting; Nanking Restaurant, London; 24 November 1934.

International Congress for the Defence of Culture, Paris; 21-6 June 1935 (Anand and Zaheer attend; formative to aims of association).

Official inauguration of the All-India Progressive Writers’ Association, Lucknow, April 1936.

Conference of International Association of Writers for the Defence of Culture, London; 19-23 June 1936 (Anand presents address).

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John Lehmann

About:

John Lehmann was a writer, poet and publisher. He was the editor of the hugely influential magazine New Writing (1936-40), which also published South Asian writers such as Ahmed Ali and Mulk Raj Anand. He was managing director for Virginia and Leonard Woolf's Hogarth Press from 1938-46, before founding his own publishing company.

Date of birth:

02 Jun 1907

Connections:

Ahmed Ali, Mulk Raj Anand, David Gascoyne, Louis MacNeice, George Orwell, Edith Sitwell, Stephen Spender, Leonard Woolf, Virginia Woolf.

Secondary works:

Hughes, David, ‘Lehmann, (Rudolph) John Frederick (1907–1987)’, Oxford Dictionary of National Biography (Oxford University Press, 2004) [http://www.oxforddnb.com/view/article/39838]

City of birth:

Bourne End, Buckinghamshire

Country of birth:

England

Other names:

Rudolph John Frederick Lehmann

Date of death:

07 Apr 1987

Location of death:

Westminster

Location:

London

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Virginia Woolf

About:

Born in 1882 to Julia and Leslie Stephen, Adeline Virginia Stephen would become a prominent modernist and feminist writer and a central figure of the 'Bloomsbury Group'. From her early childhood, her parents had encouraged her to write. The deaths of her mother, Julia, in 1895 and her step-sister, Stella, in 1897 were followed by those of her father, Leslie, in 1904 and her brother, Thoby, in 1906. This decade of family deaths had a profound effect on Virginia. She was survived by an older sister, Vanessa, who would also become part of the Bloomsbury Group, and aher brother, Adrian.

Virginia spent part of her childhood in Talland House near St Ives, Cornwall, and the rest in Kensington, London. Her memories of St Ives and of sexual abuse by her half-brother, George Duckworth, are prominent in her writing about her childhood. In the years following the deaths of her father and brother, Virginia’s mental health began to decline and she sank into depression and attempted suicide in 1913.

After her father’s death, Virginia and her siblings moved from Kensington to Bloomsbury. In Bloomsbury, Thoby introduced his two sisters to a group of men he had met in Cambridge: Leonard Woolf, Lytton Strachey, Clive Bell, Roger Fry, Duncan Grant, E. M. Forster and John Maynard Keynes. In 1912, Virginia married Leonard Woolf. The couple embarked on a life of writing and publishing. Virginia published her first novel, The Voyage Out, in 1915. In 1917, she and Leonard set up the Hogarth Press which published their own work as well as work by T. S. Eliot, Katherine Mansfield, E. M. Forster, Maynard Keynes and Freud, among others, and that of Indian writers Ahmed Ali and Rajani Palme Dutt. Virginia went on to publish a string of modernist novels.

After the Woolf’s Bloomsbury home was bombed in 1940, they retreated to their country home, Monk’s House, in Sussex. There, Virginia once again slipped into depression, and on 28 March 1941 she drowned herself in the nearby River Ouse.

Published works:

The Voyage Out (London: Duckworth, 1915)

Night and Day (London: Duckworth, 1919)

Jacob's Room (London: L. & V. Woolf, 1922)

The Common Reader (London: Hogarth, 1925)

Mrs Dalloway (London: L. & V. Woolf, 1925)

To the Lighthouse (London: Hogarth, 1927)

Orlando: A Biography (London: L. & V. Woolf, 1928)

A Room of One's Own (London: Hogarth, 1929)

On Being III (London: Hogarth, 1930)

The Waves (London: Hogarth, 1931)

The London Scene: Five Essays (London: Hogarth, [1931-2] 1982)

The Common Reader: Second Series (London: Hogarth, 1932

(with Leonard Woolf) The Hogarth Letters (London: Hogarth, 1933)

The Years (London: Hogarth, 1937)

Three Guineas (London: Hogarth, 1938)

Between the Acts (London: Hogarth, 1941)

The Death of the Moth, and Other Essays (London: Hogarth, 1942)

The Moment, and Other Essays (London: Hogarth, 1947)

The Captain's Death Bed, and Other Essays (London: Hogarth, 1950)

Collected Essays, 4 vols (London: Hogarth, 1966-7)

Moments of Being: Unpublished Autobiographical Writings (London: Chatto & Windus, 1976)

Books and Portraits: Some Further Selections from the Literary and Biographical Writings of Virginia Woolf (London: Hogarth, 1977)

The Letters of Virginia Woolf, 6 vols (London: Hogarth Press, 1975-80)

The Diary of Virginia Woolf, 5 vols (London: Hogarth Press, 1977-84)

A Passionate Apprentice: The Early Journals, 1897-1909 (London: Chatto & Windus, 1990)

Date of birth:

25 Jan 1882

Connections:

Ahmed Ali, Mulk Raj Anand, Clive Bell, Vanessa Bell, Robert Bridges, George Duckworth, Rajani Palme Dutt, T. S. Eliot, E. M. Forster, Roger Fry, Duncan Grant, John Maynard Keynes, Leslie Stephen, Lytton Strachey, Vita Sackville-West, Leonard Sidney Woolf.

Secondary works:

Abel, Elizabeth, Virginia Woolf and the Fictions of Psychoanalysis: Women in Culture and Society (Chicago and London: University of Chicago Press, 1989)

Albright, Daniel, Personality and Impersonality: Lawrence, Woolf and Mann (Chicago and London: University of Chicago Press, 1978)

Apter, T. E., Virginia Woolf: A Study of Her Novels (London: Macmillan, 1979)

Asbee, Sue, Virginia Woolf, Life and Works (Hove: Wayland, 1989)

Bazin, Nancy Topping, Virginia Woolf and the Androgynous Vision (New Brunswick: Rutgers University Press, 1973)

Bell, Quentin, Virginia Woolf: A Biography, 2 vols (London: Hogarth Press, 1972)

Berman, Jessica Schiff, and Goldman, Jane, Virginia Woolf out of Bounds: Selected Papers on the Tenth Annual Conference on Virginia Woolf, University of Maryland, Baltimore Country, June 8-11, 2000 (New York: Pace University Press, 2001)

Bishop, Edward, A Virginia Woolf Chronology (Basingstoke: Macmillan, 1989)

Blackstone, Bernard, Virginia Woolf: A Commentary (London: Hogarth Press, 1972)

Bowlby, Rachel, Virginia Woolf: Feminist Destinations, Rereading Literature (Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1988)

Clements, Patricia, and Grundy, Isobel, Virginia Woolf: New Critical Essays (London: Vision, 1983)

Daugherty, Beth Rigel, and Barrett, Eileen, Virginia Woolf: Texts and Contexts (Lanham, MD: University Press of America, 1996)

Davies, Stevie, Virginia Woolf: To the Lighthouse (Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1989)

DeSalvo, Louise A., Virginia Woolf: The Impact of Childhood Sexual Abuse on Her Life and Work (London: Women's Press, 1989)

DeSalvo, Louise A., Virginia Woolf's First Voyage: A Novel in the Making (London: Macmillan, 1980)

DiBattista, Maria, Virginia Woolf's Major Novels: The Fables of Anon (New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 1980)

Dick, Susan, Virginia Woolf: Modern Fiction (London: Edward Arnold, 1989)

Donahue, Delia, The Novels of Virginia Woolf (Roma: Bulzoni Editore, 1977)

Dowling, David, Bloomsbury Aesthetics and the Novels of Forster (London: Macmillan, 1985)

Dunn, Jane, A Very Close Conspiracy: Vanessa Bell and Virginia Woolf (London: Cape, 1990)

Ferrer, Daniel, Virginia Woolf and the Madness of Language (London: Routledge, 1990)

Fleishman, Avrom, Virginia Woolf: A Critical Reading (Baltimore and London: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1975)

Fox, Alice, Virginia Woolf and the Literature of the English Renaissance (Oxford: Clarendon, 1990)

Freedman, Ralph, Virginia Woolf: Revaluation and Continuity: A Collection of Essays (Berkeley and London: University of California Press, 1980)

Goldman, Mark, The Reader's Art: Virginia Woolf as Literary Critic (The Hague: Mouton, 1976)

Gordon, Lyndall, Virginia Woolf: A Writer's Life (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1984)

Gordon, Lyndall, 'Woolf, (Adeline) Virginia (1882-1941)', Oxford Dictionary of National Biography (Oxford University Press, 2004) [http://www.oxforddnb.com/view/article/37018]

Gorsky, Susan Rubinow, Virginia Woolf (Boston, MA: Twayne, 1978)

Harper, Howard, Between Language and Silence: The Novels of Virginia Woolf (Baton Rouge and London: Louisiana State University Press, 1982)

Hawthorn, Jeremy, Virginia Woolf's 'Mrs Dalloway': A Study in Alienation, Text and Context (London: Chatto & Windus for Sussex University Press, 1975)

Johnson, Manly, Virginia Woolf (New York: Frederick Ungar, 1973)

Kelley, Alice van Buren, The Novels of Virginia Woolf: Fact and Vision (Chicago and London: University of Chicago Press, 1973)

Kennedy, Richard, A Boy at the Hogarth Press (London: The Whitington Press, 1972)

Kiely, Robert, Beyond Egotism: The Fiction of James Joyce, Virginia Woolf, and D. H. Lawrence (Cambridge, MA, and London: Harvard University Press, 1980)

Kirkpatrick, B. J., A Bibliography of Virginia Woolf, 4th edn (Oxford: Clarendon, 1997)

Kumar, Shiv K., Virginia Woolf and Intuition (Folcroft, PA: Folcroft Library Editions, 1977)

Leaska, Mitchell A., The Novels of Virginia Woolf: From Beginning to End (London: Weidenfeld & Nicolson, 1979)

Lee, Hermione, The Novels of Virginia Woolf (London: Methuen, 1977)

Lee, Hermione, Virginia Woolf (London: Chatto & Windus, 1996)

Lehmann, John, Virginia Woolf and Her World (London: Thames & Hudson, 1975)

Lewis, Thomas S. W., Virginia Woolf: A Collection of Criticism, Contemporary Studies in Literature (New York and London: McGraw-Hill, 1975)

Love, Jean O., Virginia Woolf: Sources of Madness and Art (Berkeley and London: University of California Press, 1977)

Majumdar, Robin, and MacLaurin, Allen, Virginia Woolf: The Critical Heritage (London and Boston: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1975)

Marcus, Jane, New Feminist Essays on Virginia Woolf (London: Macmillan, 1981)

Marcus, Jane, Virginia Woolf: A Feminist Slant (Lincoln, NB, and London: University of Nebraska Press, 1983)

Marcus, Jane, Virginia Woolf and Bloomsbury: A Centenary Celebration (Basingstoke: Macmillan, 1987)

McLaurin, Allen, Virginia Woolf: The Echoes Enslaved (London: Cambridge University Press, 1973)

McNichol, Stella, Virginia Woolf and the Poetry of Fiction (London: Routledge, 1990)

Meisel, Perry, The Absent Father: Virginia Woolf and Walter Pater (New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 1980)

Miller, C. Ruth, Virginia Woolf: The Frames of Art and Life (Basingstoke: Macmillan, 1988)

Minow-Pinkney, Makiko, Virginia Woolf and the Problem of the Subject (Brighton: Harvester, 1987)

Mittal, S. P., The Aesthetic Venture (Delhi: Ajanta, 1985)

Moore, Madeline, The Short Season between Two Silences: The Mystical and the Political in the Novels of Virginia Woolf (Boston, MA, and London: Allen & Unwin, 1984)

Naremore, James, The World without a Self: Virginia Woolf and the Novel (New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 1973)

Nicolson, Nigel, Vita and Harold: The Letters of Vita Sackville-West and Harold Nicolson (London: Weidenfeld & Nicolson, 1992)

Noble, Joan Russell, Recollections of Virginia Woolf (London: Peter Owen, 1972)

Novak, Jane, The Razor Edge of Balance: A Study of Virginia Woolf (Coral Gables: University of Miami Press, 1975)

Panken, Shirley, Virginia Woolf and The 'Lust of Creation': A Psychoanalytic Exploration (Albany: State University of New York Press, 1987)

Parasuram, Laxmi, Virginia Woolf: The Emerging Reality (Burdwan: University of Burdwan, 1978)

Poole, Roger, The Unknown Virginia Woolf (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1978)

Poresky, Louise A., The Elusive Self: Psyche and Spirit in Virginia Woolf's Novels (Newark, DE: University of Delaware Press, 1981)

Radin, Grace, Virginia Woolf's 'The Years': The Evoluton of a Novel (Knoxville: University of Tennessee Press, 1981)

Rice, Thomas Jackson, Virginia Woolf: A Guide to Research (New York and London: Garland, 1984)

Roe, Sue, Writing and Gender: Virginia Woolf's Writing Practice (London: Harvester Wheatsheaf, 1990)

Rose, Phyllis, Woman of Letters: A Life of Virginia Woolf (London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1978)

Rosenbaum, Stanford Patrick, The Bloomsbury Group: A Collection of Memoirs, Commentary and Criticism (London: Croom Helm, 1975)

Rosenthal, Michael, Virginia Woolf (London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1979)

Schlack, Beverly Ann, Continuing Presences: Virginia Woolf's Use of Literary Allusion (University Park and London: Pennsylvannia State University Press, 1979)

Schug, Charles, The Romantic Genesis of the Modern Novel: Critical Essays in Modern Literature (Pittsburgh: University of Pittsburgh Press, 1979; London: Feffer & Simons, 1979)

Sharma, K. K., Modern Fictional Theorists: Virginia Woolf & D. H. Lawrence (Ghaziabad: Vimal Prakashan, 1981)

Spater, George, and Parsons, Ian, A Marriage of True Minds: An Intimate Portrait of Leonard and Virginia Woolf (London: Hogarth Press, 1977)

Spilka, Mark, Virginia Woolf's Quarrel with Grieving (Lincoln, NB, and London: University of Nebraska Press, 1980)

Sprague, Claire, Virginia Woolf: A Collection of Critical Essays: Twentieth Century Views (Englewood Cliffs and Hemel Hempstead: Prentice-Hall, 1971)

Steele, Elizabeth, Virginia Woolf's Literary Sources and Allusions: A Guide to the Essays (New York and London: Garland, 1983)

Steele, Elizabeth, Virginia Woolf's Rediscovered Essays: Sources and Allusions (New York and London: Garland, 1987)

Sugiyama, Yoko, Rainbow and Granite: A Study of Virginia Woolf (Tokyo: The Hokuseido Press, 1973)

Transue, Pamela J., Virginia Woolf and the Politics of Style (Albany: State University of New York Press, 1986)

Trombley, Stephen, All That Summer She Was Mad: Virginia Woolf: Female Victim of Male Medicine (New York: Continuum, 1982)

Warner, Eric, Virginia Woolf: A Centenary Perspective (London: Macmillan, 1984)

Wheare, Jane, Virginia Woolf: Dramatic Novelist (Basingstoke, Macmillan, 1989)

Zwerdling, Alex, Virginia Woolf and the Real World (Berkeley and London: University of California Press, 1986)

Archive source:

Notebook, Add. MS 61837, British Library, St Pancras

Memoir of her father, British Library, St Pancras

Papers, Girton College, Cambridge

Correspondence and literary papers, Historical Manuscripts Commission, National Register of Archives

Literary MSS and notebooks, Berg Collection, New York Public Library

Correspondence, family papers and literary MSS, University of Sussex Special Collections

Letters to S. S. Koteliansky, Add. MS 48974, British Library, St Pancras

Letters to John Lehmann, Add. MS 56234, British Library, St Pancras

Correspondence with Society of Authors, Add. MS 63351, British Library, St Pancras

Correspondence with Theodora Bosanquet, Houghton Library, Harvard University

Correspondence with Roger Fry, King's College Archive Centre, Cambridge

Letters to John Maynard Keynes, King's College Archive Centre, Cambridge

Letters and postcards to G. H. W. Rylands, King's College Archive Centre, Cambridge

Letters to W. J. H. Sprott, King's College Archive Centre, Cambridge

Letters to Thoby Stephen, King's College Archive Centre, Cambridge

Letters to Gladys Easdale, London University Library

Letters from T. S. Eliot, Berg Collection, New York Public Library

Letters to Arnold Bennett, University College, London

City of birth:

London

Country of birth:

England

Other names:

Adeline Virginia Stephen

Date of death:

28 Mar 1941

Location of death:

River Ouse, Sussex

Location:

22 Hyde Park Gate, Kensington, London

46 Gordon Square, Bloomsbury, London

29 Fitzroy Square, Bloomsbury, London

Hogarth House, Richmond

Asheham House, Sussex

52 Tavistock Square, Bloomsbury, London

37 Mecklenburgh Square, Bloomsbury, London

Monk's House, Rodmell, Sussex

Tags for Making Britain:

Leonard Woolf

About:

Leonard Sidney Woolf was born in Kensington, London, to Sidney Woolf QC and Marie de Jongh. He studied at Trinity College, Cambridge, where he befriended Saxon Sydney-Turner, Lytton Strachey, Clive Bell, and Thoby Stephen (son of Sir Leslie Stephen, brother of Virginia and Vanessa). Out of these friendships of the so-called 'Apostles' the 'Bloomsbury Group' emerged.

In 1904, Woolf joined the Colonial Civil Service in Ceylon but resigned in 1912 because of his growing disillusionment with imperialism, but also because he had fallen in love with Virginia Stephen. Leonard and Virginia married in 1912 and Virginia took Leonard's family name. After Virginia's death in 1941, Woolf continued to oversee and publish her uncollected essays and a selection of her diaries.

Woolf was a member of the Fabian Society and in 1916 wrote two Fabian reports that were to become part of the basis of the League of Nations. His anti-imperialism, socialism, and internationalism found expression in a number of books and pamphlets, and from 1919 to 1945 he served as secretary to the Labour Party's advisory committees on international and imperial questions. Woolf also became involved in editing the Nation, the Political Quarterly and the New Statesman. More significantly, he and Virginia established the Hogarth Press in 1917. In 1942, he provided the Introduction to Mulk Raj Anand's Letters to India.

Leonard Woolf suffered a stroke and died on 14 August 1969 at Monk's House, a cottage in Rodmell he and Virginia had bought in 1919.

Published works:

The Village in the Jungle (London: Edward Arnold, 1913)

The Wise Virgins: A Story of Words, Opinions, and a Few Emotions (London: Edward Arnold, 1914)

Co-Operation and the Future of Industry (London: Allen & Unwin, 1918)

Economic Imperialism (London and New York: Swarthmore, 1920)

Empire and Commerce in Africa: A Study in Economic Imperialism (London: Allen & Unwin, 1920)

Mandates and Empire (League of Nations Union, 1920)

International Co-Operative Trade (London: Fabian, 1922)

After the Deluge: A Study of Communal Psychology (London: Hogarth Press, 1931)

The Intelligent Man's Way to Prevent War (London: Gollancz, 1933)

(with Mary Adams) The Modern State (London: Allen & Unwin, 1933)

(with Virginia Woolf) Quack, Quack!: Essays on Unreason and Superstition in Poltics, Belief and Thought (London: Leonard and Virginia Woolf, 1935)

After the Deluge, Vol. 2 (London: Hogarth Press, 1939)

Barbarians at the Gate (London: Victor Gollancz, 1939)

The Hotel (London: Hogarth Press, 1939)

The War for Peace (London: Routledge, 1940)

Foreign Policy: The Labour Party's Dilemma (London: Fabian Publications, 1947)

Principia Politica: A Study of Communal Psychology (London: Hogarth Press, 1953)

Sowing: An Autobiography of the Years 1880-1904 (London: Hogarth Press, 1960)

Growing: An Autobiography of the Years 1904-1911 (London: Hogarth Press, 1961)

Diaries in Ceylon, 1908-1911. Records of a Colonial Administrator. Being the Official Diaries Maintained by Leonard Woolf While Assistant Government Agent of the Hambantota District, Ceylon, During the Period August 1908 to May 1911. Edited with a Preface by Leonard Woolf. And, Stories from the East: Three Short Stories on Ceylon by Leonard Woolf (Dehiwala, 1962)

Beginning Again: An Autobiography of the Years 1911-1918 (London: Hogarth Press, 1964)

A Calendar of Consolation: A Comforting Thought for Every Day in the Year (London: Hogarth Press, 1967)

Downhill All the Way: An Autobiography of the Years 1919-1939 (London: Hogarth Press, 1967)

The Journey Not the Arrival Matters: An Autobiography of the Years 1939-1969 (London: Hogarth Press, 1969)

In Savage Times: Leonard Woolf on Peace and War (Garland Publishing Inc, [1925-1944] 1973)

(with Frederic Spotts) Letters of Leonard Woolf (San Diego: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1989)

(with Trekkie Ritchie Parsons and Judith Adamson) Love Letters (London: Chatto & Windus, 2001)

A Tale Told by Moonlight (London: Hesperus, 2006)

Date of birth:

25 Nov 1880

Connections:

Ahmed Ali, Mulk Raj Anand, Clive Bell, Vanessa Bell, Goldsworthy Lowes Dickinson, T. S. Eliot, E. M. Forster, Roger Fry, Duncan Grant, Robert Graves, Hsiao Ch'ien, Aldous Huxley, John Maynard Keynes, Harold Laski, Desmond MacCarthy, G. E. Moore, Herbert Read, Bertrand Russell, Nikhil Sen, Ranjee Shahani, Thoby Stephen, Lytton Strachey, Saxon Sydney-Turner, Virginia Woolf.

Contributions to periodicals:

Nation

Nation and Athenaeum (literary editor, 1923-30)

New Statesman

Political Quarterly (co-founder)

Secondary works:

Bell, Quentin, Virginia Woolf: A Biography (London: Hogarth, 1972)

Boehmer, Elleke, Empire, the Nation and the Postcolonial (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2002)

Coates, Irene, Who's Afraid of Leonard Woolf?: A Case for the Sanity of Virginia Woolf (New York: SoHo Press, 2000)

Cole, M., 'Woolf, Leonard Sidney', in Joyce M. Bellamy and John Saville (eds) Dictionary of Labour Biography, Vol. 5 (London: Macmillan, 1979)

Crick, Bernard R., Robson, William Alexander and Woolf, Leonard, Protest and Discontent (Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1970)

De Silva, M. C. W. Prabhath, Leonard Woolf, A British Civil Servant as a Judge in the Hambantora District of Colonial Sri Lanka, 1908-1911 (Kandy, Sri Lanka: M. C. W. P. de Silva, 1996)

Funke, Sarah, Virginia & Leonard Woolf (New York: Glenn Horowitz Bookseller, 2002)

Glendinning, Victoria, Leonard Woolf (London: Simon & Schuster, 2006)

Lee, Hermione, Virginia Woolf: A Biography (London: Chatto & Windus, 1996)

Luedeking, Leila, and Edmonds, Michael, Leonard Woolf: A Bibliography (Winchester: St Paul's Bibliographies, 1992)

Meyerowitz, Selma S., Leonard Woolf (Boston: Twayne, 1982)

Ondaatje, Christopher, Woolf in Ceylon: An Imperial Journey in the Shadow of Leonard Woolf, 1904-1911 (Toronto, Ont.: HarperCollins, 2005)

Rosenbaum, S. P., Edwardian Bloomsbury (Basingstoke: Macmillan, 1994)

Rosenbaum, S. P., Georgian Bloomsbury: The Early Literary History of the Bloomsbury Group, 1910-1914 (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2003)

Rosenbaum, S. P., Victorian Bloomsbury: The Early Literary History of the Bloomsbury Group (London: Macmillan, 1987)

Rosenbaum, S. P., 'Woolf, Leonard Sidney (1880-1960)', Oxford Dictionary of National Biography (Oxford University Press, 2004) [http://www.oxforddnb.com/view/article/37019]

Rosenfeld, Natania, Outsiders Together: Virginia and Leonard Woolf (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2000)

Seaburg, Alan, 52 Tavistock Square: Poems (Cambridge, MA: Anne Miniver Press, 1994)

Spater, George, and Parsons, Ian, A Marriage of True Minds: An Intimate Portrait of Leonard and Virginia Woolf (London: Hogarth Press, 1977)

Willis, J. H., Leonard and Virginia Woolf as Publishers: The Hogarth Press, 1917-41 (Charlottesville and London: University Press of Virginia, 1992)

Wilson, Duncan, and Eisenberg, J., Leonard Woolf: A Political Biography (London: Hogarth Press, 1978)

Wilson, Jean Moorcroft, Leonard Woolf: Pivot or Outsider of Bloomsbury (London: Cecil Woolf, 1994)

Wilson, Peter, The International Theory of Leonard Woolf (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2003)

Woolf, Virginia, The Letters of Virginia Woolf (London: Hogarth, 1980)

Woolf, Virginia, Bell, Anne Olivier and McNeillie, Andrew, The Diary of Virginia Woolf, 5 vols (London: Hogarth, 1977-1984)

Woolmer, J. Howard, and Gaither, Mary E., Checklist of the Hogarth Press, 1917-1946, new and revised edn (Winchester: St Paul's Bibliographies, 1986)

Archive source:

Correspondence and literary papers, Berg Collection of the New York Public Library

Correspondence, family papers and literary Mss, University of Sussex Special Collections

University of Texas, Austin

Letters to John Lehmann, Add. MS 56234, British Library, St Pancras

Letters to Saxon Sydney-Turner, Huntington Library, San Marino, California

Letters to Julian Bell, King's College Archive Centre, Cambridge

Letters to John Maynard Keynes and Lady Keynes, King's College Archive Centre, Cambridge

Letters to G. H. W. Rylands, King's College Archive Centre, Cambridge

Charleston Papers, King's College, Cambridge

Letters to William Plomer, University of Durham Library

Letters to Norah Smallwood, Brotherton Library, University of Leeds

Hogarth Press Archives, University of Reading

Monks House Papers, University of Sussex Special Collections

'Leonard Woolf', BBC Radio 3, 17 February 1970, P503R, National Sound Archive, British Library

Performance recordings, National Sound Archive, British Library

City of birth:

London

Country of birth:

England

Other names:

Leonard Sidney Woolf

Date of death:

14 Aug 1969

Location of death:

Monk's House, Rodmell, Sussex

Tags for Making Britain:

T. S. Eliot

About:

Thomas Stearns Eliot was born in St Louis, Missouri, USA, to Henry Ware Eliot and Charlotte Champe Stearns in 1888. He graduated from Smith Academy, St Louis, in 1905 before studying for a year at Milton Academy, outside Boston, and eventually following his brother to Harvard in 1906. He attained a BA in Comparative Literature in 1909 and an MA in English literature in 1910. From 1910-1911 he studied at the Sorbonne, Paris, before returning to his graduate studies in philosophy at Harvard the following year. As part of his studies there he took courses in Pali and Sanskrit, and on Hindu thought. He also met Bertrand Russell at Harvard.

In the summer of 1914, Eliot went to London on a travelling fellowship. There, he immediately struck up a friendship with Conrad Aiken and Ezra Pound, and in 1915 he was introduced to Vivienne Haigh-Wood whom he married in June of that year. He spent the next years teaching in High Wycombe and Highgate, London, until his first book, Prufrock and Other Observations, was published in 1917. His long poem The Waste Land (1922) consolidated his Modernist breakthrough.

Bertrand Russell introduced Eliot to Lady Ottoline Morrell and the people surrounding Garsington Manor such as Aldous Huxley, D. H. Lawrence, Leonard and Virginia Woolf, Roger Fry, James Joyce and, later, Mulk Raj Anand. In Conversations in Bloomsbury (1981), Anand relates how he first met Eliot at a sherry party at Harold Monro's Poetry Bookshop; also present was Nikhil Sen. By this time, Eliot was the editor of the literary journal Criterion and wanted Anand to to do some work for him. Anand describes more meetings with Eliot in the Criterion office where they would often talk about religion and writing. In 1925, Eliot was made literary editor of Faber & Gwyer (later Faber & Faber). He drew coloser to Christianity, and in 1927 he was baptised into the Church of England. Later that year he became a British citizen.

In the 1930s, Eliot focused less on his own writing and became primarily a cultural critic. After the Second World War he gave up writing poetry altogether and turned his attention to plays and literary essays. In the 1940s, he asked the Ceylonese poet and editor Meary James Tambimuttu to edit the anthology Poetry in Wartime (1942) for Faber. Eliot was a support of Tambimuttu's successful magazine Poetry London. He said of it: 'It is only in Poetry London that I can consistently expect to find new poets who matter' (back cover of Poetry London).

In 1948, Eliot won the Nobel Prize for Literature and was awarded the Order of Merit. In his later years, he assumed a more reclusive lifestyle, sharing a flat with his friend John Hayward in Carlyle Mansions on the Chelsea Embankment, until his marriage to his second wife Valerie Fletcher in 1957 . He died on 4 January 1965 of emphysema at his home in London.

Published works:

Prufrock and other Observations (London: The Egoist, 1917)

Harvard College Class of 1910: Secretary's 4th Report (Cambridge: Printed for the Class, [1920]), pp. 107-108 (includes a brief autobiographical record by T. S. Eliot)

Ara Vus Prec (London: Ovid Press, 1920)

The Sacred Wood: Essays on Poetry and Criticism (London: Methuen, 1920)

The Waste Land (London: Hogarth Press; New York: Boni & Liveright, 1922)

Homage to John Dryden: Three Essays on Poetry of the Seventeenth Century (London: L. & V. Woolf, 1924)

Journey of the Magi (London: Faber & Gwyer, 1927)

Shakespeare and the Stoicism of Seneca (London, 1927)

For Lancelot Andrewes: Essays on Style and Order (London: Faber & Gwyer, 1928)

Dante (London: Faber & Faber, 1929)

Ash Wednesday (London: Faber & Faber, 1930)

Selected Essays, 1917-1932 (London: Faber & Faber, 1932)

Sweeney Agonistes; Fragments of a Aristophanic Melodrama (London: Faber & Faber, 1932)

The Use of Poetry and the Use of Criticism: Studies in the Relation of Criticism to Poetry in England (London: Faber & Faber, 1933)

After Strange Gods: A Primer of Modern Heresy (London: Faber & Faber, 1934)

Elizabethan Essays (London: Faber & Faber, 1934)

The Rock (London: Faber & Faber, 1934)

Murder in the Cathedral (London: Faber & Faber, 1935)

Collected Poems, 1909-1935 (London: Faber & Faber, 1936)

Essays Ancient and Modern (London: Faber & Faber, 1936)

The Family Reunion: A Play (London: Faber & Faber, 1939)

The Idea of a Christian Society (London: Faber & Faber, 1939)

Old Possum's Book of Practical Cats (London: Faber & Faber, 1939)

(ed.) A Choice of Kipling's Verse (London: Faber & Faber, 1941)

Four Quartets (London: Faber & Faber, 1944)

Notes Towards the Definition of Culture (London: Faber & Faber, 1948)

The Cocktail Party: A Comedy (London: Faber & Faber, 1950)

Poetry and Drama...The Theodore Spencer Memorial Lecture, Harvard University, November 21, 1950 (London: Faber & Faber, 1951)

The Three Voices of Poetry (London: Cambridge University Press, 1953)

The Confidential Clerk: A Play (London: Faber & Faber, 1954)

The Frontiers of Criticism...A Lecture Delivered at the University of Minnesota Williams Arena on April 30, 1956 (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota, 1956)

On Poetry and Poets (London: Faber & Faber, 1957)

The Elder Statesman: A Play (London: Faber & Faber, 1959)

To Criticize the Critic, and Other Writings (London: Faber & Faber, 1965)

The Letters of T. S. Eliot, ed. by Valerie Eliot, Vol. 1, 1898-1922 (London: Faber, 1988)

Date of birth:

26 Sep 1888

Connections:

Mulk Raj Anand, Clive Bell, Roger Fry, Mark Gertler, Aldous Huxley, D. H. Lawrence, Katherine Mansfield, Lady Ottoline Morrell, Bertrand Russell, Nikhil Sen, Lytton Strachey, Purohit Swami, M. J. Tambimuttu, Leonard Woolf, Virginia Woolf.

Contributions to periodicals:

'A Sceptical Patrician', Athenaeum 46.7 (1919), pp. 361-2

Secondary works:

Ackroyd, Peter, T. S. Eliot (London: Hamilton, 1984)

Aiken, Conrad, Ushant: An Essay (New York: Duell, Sloan & Pearce, 1952; Boston: Little, Brown & Co., 1952)

Anand, Mulk Raj, Conversations in Bloomsbury (London: Wildwood House, 1981)

Browne, Elliott Martin, The Making of T. S. Eliot's Plays (London: Cambridge University Press, 1969)

Bush, Ronald, 'Eliot, Thomas Stearns (1888-1965)', Oxford Dictionary of National Biography (Oxford University Press, 2004) [http://www.oxforddnb.com/view/article/32993]

Bush, Ronald, T. S. Eliot: A Study in Character and Style (New York and Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1984)

Gallup, Donald Clifford, A Bibliographical Check-List of the Writing of T. S. Eliot (London: Faber & Faber, 1952)

Gordon, Lyndall, Eliot's New Life (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1988)

Gordon, Lyndall, T. S. Eliot's Early Years (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1977)

Hall, D., 'The Art of Poetry: I, T. S. Eliot', Paris Review 21 (1959), pp. 47-70

Howarth, Herbert, Notes on Some Figures Behind T. S. Eliot (London: Chatto & Windus, 1965)

Jain, Manju, T. S. Eliot and American Philosophy: The Harvard Years (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1993)

Julius, Anthony, T. S. Eliot, Anti-Semitism and Literary Form (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1995)

Kenner, Hugh, The Invisible Poet: T. S. Eliot (London: W. H. Allen, 1960)

Kenner, Hugh, T. S. Eliot: A Collection of Critical Essays (Englewood Cliffs: Prentice-Hall, 1962)

Levy, William Turner, Affectionately, T. S. Eliot: The Story of a Friendship, 1947-1965 (Philadelphia: Lippincott, 1968)

March, Richard and Tambimuttu, M. J., T. S. Eliot: A Symposium edited by Tambimuttu and Richard March (London: Editions Poetry London, 1948)

Matthews, Thomas Stanley, Great Tom: Notes Toward the Definition of T. S. Eliot (London: Weidenfeld & Nicolson, 1974)

Mayer, John T., T. S. Eliot's Silent Voices (New York and Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1989)

Moody, A. David, The Cambridge Companion to T. S. Eliot (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1994)

Pound, Ezra, The Selected Letters of Ezra Pound, 1907-1941 (New York: Harcourt, Brace, 1950)

Raine, Craig, In Defence of T. S. Eliot (London: Picador, 2000)

Raine, Craig, T. S. Eliot (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2006)

Ricks, Beatrice, T. S. Eliot: A Bibliography of Secondary Works (Metuchen, NJ, and London: Scarecrow Press, 1980)

Ricks, Christopher, T. S. Eliot and Prejudice (London: Faber & Faber, 1988)

Sencourt, Robert, T. S. Eliot: A Memoir (London: Garnstone Press, 1971)

Shivpuri, Jagdish, Six Modern English Poets (New Delhi: S. Chand & Co., 1973)

Soldo, John Joseph Daniel, The Tempering of T. S. Eliot, 1888-1915 (Harvard University Press, 1972)

Spender, Stephen, Eliot (London: Fontana, 1975)

Tate, John Orley Allen, T. S. Eliot: The Man and His Work (London: Chatto & Windus, 1967)

Tomlin, E. W. F., T. S. Eliot: A Friendship (London: Routledge, 1988)

Tratner, Michael, Modernism and Mass Politics: Joyce, Woolf, Eliot, Yeats (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1995)

Woolf, Virginia, The Diary of Virginia Woolf, vol. 2, 1920-1924, ed. by Anne Olivier Bell and Andrew MacNeillie (London: Hogarth Press, 1978)

Archive source:

MSS and letters, Boston Public Library, Massachusetts

MSS and letters, Olin Library, Cornell University, Ithaca, New York

Correspondence, literary MSS and papers, Houghton Library, Harvard University

MSS and letters, Huntington Library, San Marino, California

Correspondence, literary MSS and papers, King's College Archive Centre, Cambridge

Papers, Magdalene College, Cambridge

Letters, Merton College, Oxford

Papers, Milton Academy Library, Massachusetts

Literary MSS and papers, New York Public Library

MSS and letters, Princeton University Library, New Jersey

Correspondence and literary MSS, Harry Ransom Humanities Research Center, University of Texas

Eliot family papers, Reed College, Oregon

MSS and letters, E. H. Butler Library, State University of New York, Buffalo

Papers relating to the Moot, University of London

Correspondence relating to trial of Lady Chatterley's Lover, University of Bristol

MSS and letters, University of Chicago Library

Papers, University of Maryland

Correspondence, Mcpherson Library, University of Victoria

Letters to A. D. Lindsay, Balliol College, Oxford

Correspondence with G. K. Chesterton, Add. MS 73195, fols. 60-69, British Library, St Pancras

Letters to S. S. Koteliansky, Add. MS 48974, British Library, St Pancras

Letters to Margaret Nason of the Bindery tea shop, dep. 9935, British Library, St Pancras

Letters to Sydney Schiff and Violet Schiff, Add. MS 52918, British Library, St Pancras

Letters to Tandy family, Manuscript Collection, British Library, St Pancras

Vivien Eliot papers, Bodleian Library, Oxford

Letters to Helen Gardner, Bodleian Library, Oxford

Correspondence with Monty Belgion, Churchill Archives Centre, Churchill College, Cambridge

Letters to Harman Grisewood relating to David Jones, Lauinger Library, Georgetown University, Washington, DC

University Archives, Harvard University

Letters to T. Bosanquet, Houghton Library, Harvard University

Letters to E. Martin and Henzie Browne, Houghton Library, Harvard University

Conrad Aiken Papers, Huntington Library, San Marino, California

Letters to John Maynard Keynes, Churchill Archives Centre, Churchill College, Cambridge

Letters to G. H. W. Rylands, Churchill Archives Centre, Churchill College, Cambridge

Correspondence with Bertrand Russell, William Reedy Division of Archives and Research Collections, McMaster University, Hamilton, Ontario

Correspondence with John Dover Wilson, National Library of Scotland, Edinburgh

Correspondence with David Jones, National Library of Wales, Aberystwyth

John Quinn Papers, New York Public Library

Virginia Woolf Papers, New York Public Library

Emily Hale Papers, Firestone Library, Princeton University, New Jersey

Paul Elmer More Papers, Firestone Library, Princeton University, New Jersey

Allen Tate Papers, Firestone Library, Princeton University, New Jersey

Marianne Moore Collection, Rosenbach Museum, Philadelphia

Emily Hale Papers, Scripps College, California

Correspondence with Lord Clark, Tate Collection

Letters to Patricia Hutchins, Trinity College, Dublin

Correspondence with Thomas McGreevy, Trinity College, Dublin

Correspondence mainly with Maurice Reckitt, University of Sussex Special Collections

Correspondence with Leonard Woolf, University of Sussex Special Collections

Correspondence with Virginia Woolf (copies), University of Sussex Special Collections

Special Collections, University of Chicago

Ezra Pound Papers, University of Indiana

William Greenleaf Eliot Papers, Washington University, St Louis, Missouri

Ezra Pound Papers, Beinecke Library, Yale University

Osborn Collection, Beinecke Library, Yale University

Letters to William Force Stead, Beinecke Library, Yale University

Film, BBC Written Archives Centre, Reading

Film, Harvard Film Service, Harvard University

Documentary recordings, National Sound Archive, British Library

Performance recordings, National Sound Archive, British Library

Harvard College Library, Harvard University

Library of Congress, Washington, DC

City of birth:

St Louis

Country of birth:

United States of America

Other names:

Thomas Stearns Eliot

Date of death:

04 Jan 1965

Location of death:

3 Kensington Court Gardens, London

Date of 1st arrival in Britain:

03 Aug 1914

Dates of time spent in Britain:

3 August 1914 - September 1932, June 1933-1965

Location:

3 Kensington Court Gardens, London

Grenville Place, St Stephen's Church, Gloucester Road, London

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