John Edgell Rickword, MC (22 October 1898 – 15 March 1982) was an English poet, critic, journalist and literary editor. He became one of the leading

communist Communism (from Latin la, communis, lit=common, universal, label=none) is a far-left sociopolitical, philosophical, and economic ideology and current within the socialist movement whose goal is the establishment of a communist society, a s ...

intellectuals active in the 1930s.

Early life

He was born in

Colchester Colchester ( ) is a city in Essex, in the East of England. It had a population of 122,000 in 2011. The demonym is Colcestrian. Colchester occupies the site of Camulodunum, the first major city in Roman Britain and its first capital. Colches ...

Essex Essex () is a county in the East of England. One of the home counties, it borders Suffolk and Cambridgeshire to the north, the North Sea to the east, Hertfordshire to the west, Kent across the estuary of the River Thames to the south, and G ...

, where he attended the local grammar school. He served as an officer in the

British Army The British Army is the principal land warfare force of the United Kingdom, a part of the British Armed Forces along with the Royal Navy and the Royal Air Force. , the British Army comprises 79,380 regular full-time personnel, 4,090 Gurk ...

World War I World War I (28 July 1914 11 November 1918), often abbreviated as WWI, was one of the deadliest global conflicts in history. Belligerents included much of Europe, the Russian Empire, the United States, and the Ottoman Empire, with fightin ...

, having joined the

Artists' Rifles The 21 Special Air Service Regiment (Artists) (Reserve), historically known as The Artists Rifles is a regiment of the Army Reserve. Its name is abbreviated to 21 SAS(R). Raised in London in 1859 as a volunteer light infantry unit, the regimen ...

in 1916, being awarded a

Military Cross The Military Cross (MC) is the third-level (second-level pre-1993) military decoration awarded to officers and (since 1993) other ranks of the British Armed Forces, and formerly awarded to officers of other Commonwealth countries. The MC i ...

. He was a published war poet, and collected his early verse in ''Behind the Eyes'' (1921). On 4 January 1919, Rickword developed an illness that was diagnosed as a "general vascular invasion which had resulted in general septicaemia". His left eye was so badly infected that they thought it necessary to remove it to prevent the infection from spreading to the other eye. He went up to the

University of Oxford , mottoeng = The Lord is my light , established = , endowment = £6.1 billion (including colleges) (2019) , budget = £2.145 billion (2019–20) , chancellor ...

in 1919, staying only four terms reading French literature, and leaving when he married. Literary friends from this period included mainly other ex-soldiers:

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Edmund Blunden Edmund Charles Blunden (1 November 1896 – 20 January 1974) was an English poet, author, and critic. Like his friend Siegfried Sassoon, he wrote of his experiences in World War I in both verse and prose. For most of his career, Blunden was als ...

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A. E. Coppard Alfred Edgar Coppard (4 January 187813 January 1957) was an English author, noted for his poetry and short stories. Life Coppard was born the son of a tailor and a housemaid in Folkestone, and had little formal education. Coppard grew up in ...

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Robert Graves Captain Robert von Ranke Graves (24 July 1895 – 7 December 1985) was a British poet, historical novelist and critic. His father was Alfred Perceval Graves, a celebrated Irish poet and figure in the Gaelic revival; they were both Celtic ...

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, and Alan Porter. His work appeared in the ''Oxford Poetry'' 1921

anthology In book publishing, an anthology is a collection of literary works chosen by the compiler; it may be a collection of plays, poems, short stories, songs or excerpts by different authors. In genre fiction, the term ''anthology'' typically categ ...

, with Blunden, Golding, Porter, Graves, Richard Hughes, and

Frank Prewett Frank James Prewett (August 24, 1893 – February 16, 1962) was a Canadian poet who spent most of his life in the United Kingdom. He was a war poet of the First World War and was taken up by Siegfried Sassoon, but after a period of being lionised s ...

Critic

He then took up literary work in London. He reviewed for the ''Times Literary Supplement'', which led to his celebrated review of

T. S. Eliot Thomas Stearns Eliot (26 September 18884 January 1965) was a poet, essayist, publisher, playwright, literary critic and editor.Bush, Ronald. "T. S. Eliot's Life and Career", in John A Garraty and Mark C. Carnes (eds), ''American National Biogr ...

's ''

The Waste Land ''The Waste Land'' is a poem by T. S. Eliot, widely regarded as one of the most important poems of the 20th century and a central work of modernist poetry. Published in 1922, the 434-line poem first appeared in the United Kingdom in the Octob ...

''.

J. C. Squire Sir John Collings Squire (2 April 1884 – 20 December 1958) was a British writer, most notable as editor of the ''London Mercury'', a major literary magazine in the interwar period. He antagonised several eminent authors, but attracted a coterie ...

published him in the ''London Mercury'', and Desmond MacCarthy as literary editor of the ''

New Statesman The ''New Statesman'' is a British political and cultural magazine published in London. Founded as a weekly review of politics and literature on 12 April 1913, it was at first connected with Sidney and Beatrice Webb and other leading members ...

'' gave him work. He started the ''

Calendar of Modern Letters ''The Calendar of Modern Letters'' was a short-lived British literary review journal. It was established by the poet Edgell Rickword, and published from March 1925 to July 1927. Contributors included Edmund Blunden, Robert Graves, Siegfied Sasso ...

'' literary review, now highly regarded, in March 1925. It lasted until July 1927, assisted by Douglas Garman and then

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, and contributions from his cousin C. H. Rickword. The ''Scrutinies'' books of collected pieces from it were a ''succes d'estime''; the purpose of the publication was a mass killing of the sacred cows of Edwardian literature (

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H. G. Wells Herbert George Wells"Wells, H. G."
Revised 18 May 2015. ''

Scrutiny Scrutiny (French: ''scrutin''; Late Latin: ''scrutinium''; from ''scrutari'', meaning "those who search through piles of rubbish in the hope of finding something of value" and originally from the Latin "scruta," meaning "broken things, rags, or ...

'', the magazine founded a few years later by

F. R. Leavis Frank Raymond "F. R." Leavis (14 July 1895 – 14 April 1978) was an English literary critic of the early-to-mid-twentieth century. He taught for much of his career at Downing College, Cambridge, and later at the University of York. Leavis ra ...

and

Q. D. Leavis Queenie Dorothy Leavis (née Roth, 7 December 1906 – 17 March 1981) was an English literary critic and essayist.Mary Grover, "Leavis, Q.D." in Faye Hammill, Esme Miskimmin, Ashlie Sponenberg (eds.) ''An Encyclopedia of British Women's Writing 19 ...

. Rickword also wrote for that publication.

Communist

He joined the

Communist Party of Great Britain The Communist Party of Great Britain (CPGB) was the largest communist organisation in Britain and was founded in 1920 through a merger of several smaller Marxist groups. Many miners joined the CPGB in the 1926 general strike. In 1930, the CPG ...

in 1934, and became increasingly active in political work during the period of the

Spanish Civil War The Spanish Civil War ( es, Guerra Civil Española)) or The Revolution ( es, La Revolución, link=no) among Nationalists, the Fourth Carlist War ( es, Cuarta Guerra Carlista, link=no) among Carlists, and The Rebellion ( es, La Rebelión, lin ...

; while still writing poetry. He was friendly with

Randall Swingler Randall Carline Swingler MM (28 May 1909 – 19 June 1967) was an English poet, writing extensively in the 1930s in the communist interest. Early life and education His was a prosperous upper middle class Anglican family in Aldershot, with an ...

, the 'official' poetry voice of the CPGB, and with

Jack Lindsay Jack Lindsay (20 October 1900 – 8 March 1990) was an Australian-born writer, who from 1926 lived in the United Kingdom, initially in Essex. He was born in Melbourne, but spent his formative years in Brisbane. He was the eldest son of Norman L ...

, his only real rival as a theoretician. He was closely connected with the leading cultural figures on the hard Left, such as

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, Ralph Fox, Julius Lipton,

A. L. Morton Arthur Leslie Morton (4 July 1903 – 23 October 1987) was an English Marxist historian. He worked as an independent scholar; from 1946 onwards he was the Chair of the Historians Group of the Communist Party of Great Britain (CPGB). He is b ...

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and Alick West. When Lawrence & Wishart was created as the official CPGB publishing house, in 1936, Rickword became a director. It was through Rickword that Lawrence & Wishart published Nancy Cunard's ''Negro: An Anthology'', though at her own expense. At that same period he was a co-founder of the '' Left Review'', which he edited. His associates included

James Boswell James Boswell, 9th Laird of Auchinleck (; 29 October 1740 (New Style, N.S.) – 19 May 1795), was a Scottish biographer, diarist, and lawyer, born in Edinburgh. He is best known for his biography of his friend and older contemporary the Englis ...

, who was the art editor; they had met around 1929. ''Left Review'' existed from 1934 to 1938, was set up by Rickword and Douglas Garman, had as writers both CPGB members and notable figures outside the party, and founded Marxist criticism in the UK. Later he became Editor of ''Our Time'', the Communist review, from 1944 to 1947, working with Arnold Rattenbury and

David Holbrook David Kenneth Holbrook (9 January 1923 – 11 August 2011) was a British writer, poet and academic. From 1989 he was an Emeritus Fellow of Downing College, Cambridge. Life David Holbrook was born in Norwich in 1923. He was educated at City of N ...

. Rickword had an upbeat view at the time on the possibilities of popular culture and radical politics, and the circulation rose as he broadened the publication's scope from popular political poetry. The post-war clique around ''Our Time'', the Salisbury Group (named for a pub), included Christopher Hill,

Charles Hobday Charles Henry Hobday (9 September 1917 – 2 March 2005) was an English poet. He was a member of the Communist Party Historians Group as well as an editor of the 1940s communist cultural magazine ''Our Time''. Life Hobday was born in Eastbourne, ...

, Holbrook, Mervyn Jones, Lindsay, Rattenbury, Montagu Slater, Swingler,

E. P. Thompson Edward Palmer Thompson (3 February 1924 – 28 August 1993) was an English historian, writer, socialist and peace campaigner. He is best known today for his historical work on the radical movements in the late 18th and early 19th centuries, in ...

; and

Doris Lessing Doris May Lessing (; 22 October 1919 – 17 November 2013) was a British-Zimbabwean novelist. She was born to British parents in Iran, where she lived until 1925. Her family then moved to Southern Rhodesia (now Zimbabwe), where she remain ...

joined it.

Works

*''Behind the Eyes'' (1921) poems *''Rimbaud: The Boy and the Poet'' (1924) *''Invocation to Angels'' (1928) poems *''Scrutinies By Various Writers'' (1928) editor *''Scrutinies'' Volume II (1931) editor *Love One Another (1929) Mandrake Press *Poet Under Saturn. The Tragedy of Verlaine by Marcel Coulon (1932) translator *A handbook of freedom: a record of English democracy through twelve centuries (1939) Co-editor with

*Collected Poems (1947) *Radical Squibs and Loyal Ripostes: a collection of satirical pamphlets of the Regency period 1819-1821 (1971) editor *Essays and Opinions Volume 1: 1921-31 (1974) edited by Alan Young *Literature and Society: Essays and Opinions, vol.2 1931-1978 (1978) *Twittingpan and Some Others (1981) poems *Fifty Poems, A Selection by Edgell Rickword with Introduction by

Roy Fuller Roy Broadbent Fuller CBE (11 February 1912 – 27 September 1991) was an English writer, known mostly as a poet. He was born at Failsworth, Lancashire to lower-middle-class parents Leopold Charles Fuller and his wife Nellie (1888–1949; née ...

References

*'Edgell Rickword, ''Collected Poems (1947) review by A. Cheetham, ''The Isis'', 26 May 1948, p.31 *''Edgell Rickword: A Poet at War'' (1989) by

, Carcanet Press *''Edgell Rickword: No Illusions'' (2007) by Michael Copp, Cecil Woolf

Notes

External links

The Calendar of Modern Letters, by Malcolm Bradbury

{{DEFAULTSORT:Rickword, Edgell 1898 births 1982 deaths British Army personnel of World War I English World War I poets 20th-century English male writers English communists English essayists English male journalists English literary critics 20th-century English poets Marxist journalists People from Colchester People educated at Colchester Royal Grammar School Royal Berkshire Regiment officers Artists' Rifles soldiers Recipients of the Military Cross Communist writers Communist poets Male essayists English male poets 20th-century essayists Military personnel from Essex