John Alfred Atkins (26 May 1916 – 31 March 2009) was a British writer, playwright, poet and novelist.

Career

Born at

Carshalton Carshalton () is a town, with a historic village centre, in south London, England, within the London Borough of Sutton. It is situated south-southwest of Charing Cross, in the valley of the River Wandle, one of the sources of which is Carshalto ...

, Surrey, to Frank Periam Atkins, a broker, and Dorothy (née Lovell), Atkins graduated B.A. from the Bristol University in 1938. Subsequently, he worked for

Mass Observation Mass-Observation is a United Kingdom social research project; originally the name of an organisation which ran from 1937 to the mid-1960s, and was revived in 1981 at the University of Sussex. Mass-Observation originally aimed to record everyday ...

and later as Assistant and Literary Editor of the left-wing newspaper ''

Tribune Tribune () was the title of various elected officials in ancient Rome. The two most important were the tribunes of the plebs and the military tribunes. For most of Roman history, a college of ten tribunes of the plebs acted as a check on th ...

'', before his call up for war service arrived in 1943. At ''Tribune'' his place was taken by George Orwell. After the war, he worked as a critic specialising in analysing the work of 20th-century writers. He taught in different parts of the world, including Sudan and Poland, and his erudition and breadth of knowledge was immense. He wrote several books for

Calder Publishing Calder Publications is a publisher of books. Since 1949, the company has published many books on all the arts, particularly subjects such as opera and painting, the theatre and critical and philosophical theory. Calder's authors have achieve ...

and other publishers and for the last thirty years of his life was spent quietly in East Anglia. He was the author of many literary bibliographies (including Aldous Huxley, George Orwell,

J. B. Priestley John Boynton Priestley (; 13 September 1894 – 14 August 1984) was an English novelist, playwright, screenwriter, broadcaster and social commentator. His Yorkshire background is reflected in much of his fiction, notably in ''The Good Compa ...

Graham Greene Henry Graham Greene (2 October 1904 – 3 April 1991) was an English writer and journalist regarded by many as one of the leading English novelists of the 20th century. Combining literary acclaim with widespread popularity, Greene acquir ...

Arthur Koestler Arthur Koestler, (, ; ; hu, Kösztler Artúr; 5 September 1905 – 1 March 1983) was a Hungarian-born author and journalist. Koestler was born in Budapest and, apart from his early school years, was educated in Austria. In 1931, Koestler join ...

and

Ernest Hemingway Ernest Miller Hemingway (July 21, 1899 – July 2, 1961) was an American novelist, short-story writer, and journalist. His economical and understated style—which he termed the iceberg theory—had a strong influence on 20th-century f ...

), and of ''The British Spy Novel'', an analysis of the genre, and the multi-volume ''Sex in Literature'' series.Joseph W. Slade, "Pornography and sexual representation: a reference guide", ''Pornography and Sexual Representation vol.3'', Greenwood Publishing Group, 2001, , pp. 812, 856.

References

External links

Obituary
''The Guardian'', 18 May 2009 1916 births 2009 deaths Alumni of the University of Bristol British literary critics British male dramatists and playwrights 20th-century British dramatists and playwrights British male novelists 20th-century British novelists 20th-century British male writers 20th-century British writers British Army personnel of World War II Military personnel from London British Army soldiers {{UK-playwright-stub