Lovat Dickson, born Horatio Henry Lovat Dickson (June 30, 1902 – January 2, 1987), was a notable publisher and writer, the first Canadian to have a major publishing role in Britain. He is best known today for his biographies of
Grey Owl
Archibald Stansfeld Belaney (; September 18, 1888 – April 13, 1938), commonly known as Grey Owl, was a British-born conservationist, fur trapper, and writer who disguised himself as a Native American man. While he achieved fame as a c ...
,
Richard Hillary
Flight Lieutenant Richard Hope Hillary (20 April 1919 – 8 January 1943) was an Anglo-Australian Royal Air Force fighter pilot during the Second World War. He wrote the book '' The Last Enemy'' about his experiences during the Battle of Brit ...
,
Radclyffe Hall
Marguerite Antonia Radclyffe Hall (12 August 1880 – 7 October 1943) was an English poet and author, best known for the novel '' The Well of Loneliness'', a groundbreaking work in lesbian literature. In adulthood, Hall often went by the name ...
Royal Ontario Museum
The Royal Ontario Museum (ROM) is a museum of art, world culture and natural history in Toronto, Ontario, Canada. It is one of the largest museums in North America and the largest in Canada. It attracts more than one million visitors every year ...
.
Biography
Lovat Dickson was born in
Victoria, Australia
Victoria is a state in southeastern Australia. It is the second-smallest state with a land area of , the second most populated state (after New South Wales) with a population of over 6.5 million, and the most densely populated state in A ...
to parents of
United Empire Loyalist
United Empire Loyalists (or simply Loyalists) is an honorific title which was first given by the 1st Lord Dorchester, the Governor of Quebec, and Governor General of The Canadas, to American Loyalists who resettled in British North America dur ...
descent.''The Canadian Encyclopedia'' Lovat Dickson entry /ref> His father was a mining engineer. At the age of seven, he moved with his family to Rhodesia (now Zimbabwe), and at eleven he was sent to school in England. At age fifteen, he moved to Canada, where he worked in a mining camp near Jasper, Alberta. A precocious entrepreneur, he founded and edited the Blue Diamond Mine newsletter while in Jasper. He began studies at the
University of Alberta
The University of Alberta, also known as U of A or UAlberta, is a public research university located in Edmonton, Alberta, Canada. It was founded in 1908 by Alexander Cameron Rutherford,"A Gentleman of Strathcona – Alexander Cameron Rutherf ...
(U of A) in 1923, graduating in 1927 with first class honours in English and earning the
Lieutenant Governor
A lieutenant governor, lieutenant-governor, or vice governor is a high officer of state, whose precise role and rank vary by jurisdiction. Often a lieutenant governor is the deputy, or lieutenant, to or ranked under a governor — a "second-in-comm ...
’s Gold Medal and a
Royal Society of Canada
The Royal Society of Canada (RSC; french: Société royale du Canada, SRC), also known as the Academies of Arts, Humanities and Sciences of Canada (French: ''Académies des arts, des lettres et des sciences du Canada''), is the senior national, bil ...
Fellowship in English literature.Clara Thomas, ''Canadian Novelists 1920-1945'', Longmans, Green and Company, Toronto, 1946 p. 34-35 He earned a Master of Arts degree from the U of A in 1929, but by this time he had already returned to England, where he embarked on a successful career as an editor and publisher. He was first assistant editor of the ''
Fortnightly Review
''The Fortnightly Review'' was one of the most prominent and influential magazines in nineteenth-century England. It was founded in 1865 by Anthony Trollope, Frederic Harrison, Edward Spencer Beesly, and six others with an investment of £9,000; ...
'', and later the editor of the ''
Review of Reviews
The ''Review of Reviews'' was a noted family of monthly journals founded in 1890–1893 by British reform journalist William Thomas Stead (1849–1912). Established across three continents in London (1891), New York (1892) and Melbourne (1893), ...
''. He started his own publishing company in 1932, called Lovat Dickson Limited, later forming a publishing partnership with Piers Gilchrist Thompson. He also founded the short-lived ''Lovat Dickson’s Magazine'' (20 issues, November 1933 to June 1935) in which he published short stories by such writers as
Walter de la Mare
Walter John de la Mare (; 25 April 1873 – 22 June 1956) was an English poet, short story writer, and novelist. He is probably best remembered for his works for children, for his poem "The Listeners", and for a highly acclaimed selection of ...
V. S. Pritchett
Sir Victor Sawdon Pritchett (also known as VSP; 16 December 1900 – 20 March 1997) was a British writer and literary critic.
Pritchett was known particularly for his short stories, collated in a number of volumes. His non-fiction works inc ...
, and D. H. Lawrence.The FictionMags Index /ref>
One of his principal successes as a publisher was ''Pilgrims of the Wild'' by Grey Owl, whom Dickson made a celebrity in England by taking him on two highly successful promotional tours in the late 1930s. Grey Owl and Dickson became friends and Dickson wrote two biographies of the enigmatic Englishman that appeared in 1939 and 1973.
In 1938, Dickson sold his catalogue to the publisher Peter Llewelyn Davies and joined the staff of
Macmillan & Company
Macmillan Publishers (occasionally known as the Macmillan Group; formally Macmillan Publishers Ltd and Macmillan Publishing Group, LLC) is a British publishing company traditionally considered to be one of the 'Big Five' English language publi ...
in London. In 1940 he became a director and the following year, 1941, he was appointed the company’s general manager, a position he held until his retirement in 1964.
He was married to Marguerite Brodie of Montreal. He died in Toronto at 84.
Bibliography
* ''Out of the West Land'' (1934)
* ''The Green leaf : a tribute to Grey Owl'' (editor, 1938)
* ''Half Breed'' (1939), biography of Grey Owl
* ''Out of the West Land'' (1944)
* ''Richard Hillary'' (1950)
* ''The Ante-Room'' (1959)
* ''The House of Words'' (1963)
* ''H.G. Wells: His Turbulent Life and Times'' (1969; reprinted in 1971)
* ''Wilderness Man: The Strange Story of Grey Owl'' (1973)
* ''Radclyffe Hall and the Well of Loneliness: A Sapphic Chronicle'' (1975)
* ''The Museum Makers: The Story of the Royal Ontario Museum'' (1986)