Henry Williamson

Threnos for T. E. Lawrence and other writings, together with A Criticism of Henry Williamson's Tarka the Otter, by T. E. Lawrence (Henry Williamson Collections, #19) (eBook, ePUB)

• Format: ePub

Produktbeschreibung

This is a collection of important essays by Henry Williamson on books and writers, first published in 1994, and now expanded. The first piece, 'Threnos for T. E. Lawrence', is in its middle section a revised version of much of 'Genius of Friendship' (1941). However the beginning and the ending are different, relating to the circumstances of 1954 when the essay appeared in 'The European', the distinguished periodical. Richard Aldington had let Williamson know by his letters that after years of research and reflection, he had come to regard Lawrence as a deeply flawed and mendacious character, very different from the popular conception of the heroic 'Lawrence of Arabia'. Williamson, on the contrary, through Lawrence's books, letters and two personal meetings with him, held him in the highest regard. He wanted to restate this before the publication of Aldington's book, and hence this essay, which begins with an account of his visit in 1949, with Christine, his second wife, to Aldington in France.

Other contents are: 'Some Nature Writers and Civilization', the prestigious Wedmore Lecture that Williamson gave to the Royal Society of Literature in 1959, considering the authors Richard Jefferies and W. H. Hudson; 'In Darkest England', the presidential address that Williamson gave to the Francis Thompson Society in 1967, in which he describes his discovery of Thompson's poetry in the crater-zones of the Western Front; three short pieces on Richard Aldington, Roy Campbell and Arthur Machen; and a collection of Williamson's prefaces and introductions to books of authors whom he admired (Douglas Bell's 'A Soldier's Diary of the Great War'; John Heygate's 'Decent Fellows'; H. A. Manhood's 'Little Peter the Great'; Izaak Walton's 'The Compleat Angler'; V. M. Yeates's 'Winged Victory'; James Farrar's 'The Unreturning Spring'; Walter Robson's 'Letters from a Soldier'; and the 1973 reprint of 'The Wipers Times').

Also included are Williamson's illuminating forewords to his own books 'The Pathway' and 'The Labouring Life', which were only printed in the scarce limited editions. The final piece is not by Williamson but is of particular interest, being the text of T. E. Lawrence's long letter to Edward Garnett (who forwarded it to Williamson), in which he gives a detailed and entertaining criticism of 'Tarka the Otter', then about to be published. From this letter arose the correspondence and friendship between these two men.

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Produktdetails

• Verlag: Henry Williamson
• Erscheinungstermin: 4. März 2014
• Englisch
• ISBN-13: 9781873507674
• Artikelnr.: 70542756

Autorenporträt

The writer Henry Williamson was born in London in 1895.

Naturalist, soldier, journalist, farmer, motor enthusiast and author of over fifty books, his descriptions of nature and the First World War have been highly praised for their accuracy.

He is best known as the author of Tarka the Otter, which won the Hawthornden Prize for Literature in 1928 and was filmed in 1977. By one of those extraordinary coincidences, Henry Williamson died while the crew were actually filming the death scene of Tarka.

His writing falls into clear groups:

1) Nature writings, of which Tarka the Otter and Salar the Salmon are the most well known, but which also include, amongst many others, The Peregrine's Saga, The Old Stag and The Phasian Bird.

2) Henry Williamson served throughout the First World War.The Wet Flanders Plain, A Patriot's Progress, and no less than five books of the 15-volume Chronicle of Ancient Sunlight (How Dear is Life, A Fox Under My Cloak, The Golden Virgin, Love and the Loveless and A Test to Destruction) cover the reality of the years 19141918, both in England and on the Western Front.

3) A further grouping concerns the social history aspect of his work in the 'Village' books (The Village Book and The Labouring Life), the four-volume Flax of Dream and the volumes of the Chronicle. But all of these groups can be found in any of his books.

Some readers are only interested in a particular aspect of his writing, but to truly understand Henry Williamson's achievement it is necessary to take account of all of his books, for their extent reflects his complex character. The whole of life, the human, animal and plant worlds, can be found within his writings. He was a man of difficult temperament but he had a depth of talent that he used to the full.

The Henry Williamson Society was founded in 1980, and has published a number of collections of Williamson's journalism, which are now being published as e-books.