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Rosemary Tonks (17 October 1928 – 15 April 2014) was an English poet and author. After publishing two poetry collections, six novels, and pieces in numerous media outlets, she disappeared from the public eye after her conversion to
Fundamentalist Christianity Christian fundamentalism, also known as fundamental Christianity or fundamentalist Christianity, is a religious movement emphasizing biblical literalism. In its modern form, it began in the late 19th and early 20th centuries among British and ...
in the 1970s; little was known about her life past that point, until her death.Motion, Andrew (2004). ''
The Times ''The Times'' is a British daily national newspaper based in London. It began in 1785 under the title ''The Daily Universal Register'', adopting its current name on 1 January 1788. ''The Times'' and its sister paper '' The Sunday Times'' (f ...
'' (London); 30 October 2004 p.8Astley, Neil (2004), ''Being Alive'', Bloodaxe Books. Quoted i
''The Indexer'', April 2005.
Accessed 12 January 2007


Early life and marriage

Rosemary Desmond Boswell Tonks was born 17 October 1928 in Gillingham, Kent, the only child of Gwendoline (née Verdi) and Desmond Tonks, a mechanical engineer. Desmond, who died of blackwater fever in Africa before Rosemary's birth, was the nephew of the surgeon and painter
Henry Tonks Henry Tonks, FRCS (9 April 1862 – 8 January 1937) was a British surgeon and later draughtsman and painter of figure subjects, chiefly interiors, and a caricaturist. He became an influential art teacher. He was one of the first British arti ...
, an official war artist on the Western Front during World War I and then professor of fine art at the
Slade Slade are an English rock band formed in Wolverhampton in 1966. They rose to prominence during the glam rock era in the early 1970s, achieving 17 consecutive top 20 hits and six number ones on the UK Singles Chart. The ''British Hit Singles ...
during the 1920s. Desmond's brother Myles was married to Gwendoline's sister Dorothy (the aunt who was later to provide Rosemary with refuge in Bournemouth, when Rosemary's life crisis had become unbearable alone). Tonks attended boarding school at Wentworth college in Bournemouth. Rosemary published children's stories while a teenager. In 1949, she married Michael Lightband (a mechanical engineer, and later a financier), and the couple moved to
Karachi Karachi (; ur, ; ; ) is the most populous city in Pakistan and 12th most populous city in the world, with a population of over 20 million. It is situated at the southern tip of the country along the Arabian Sea coast. It is the former c ...
, where she began to write poetry. Attacks of
paratyphoid Paratyphoid fever, also known simply as paratyphoid, is a bacterial infection caused by one of the three types of ''Salmonella enterica''. Symptoms usually begin 6–30 days after exposure and are the same as those of typhoid fever. Often, a grad ...
, contracted in
Calcutta Kolkata (, or , ; also known as Calcutta , List of renamed places in India#West Bengal, the official name until 2001) is the Capital city, capital of the Indian States and union territories of India, state of West Bengal, on the eastern ba ...
, and of
polio Poliomyelitis, commonly shortened to polio, is an infectious disease caused by the poliovirus. Approximately 70% of cases are asymptomatic; mild symptoms which can occur include sore throat and fever; in a proportion of cases more severe s ...
, contracted in
Karachi Karachi (; ur, ; ; ) is the most populous city in Pakistan and 12th most populous city in the world, with a population of over 20 million. It is situated at the southern tip of the country along the Arabian Sea coast. It is the former c ...
, forced a return to England. She lived in Paris in 1952–53, before returning to London where she settled with her husband in Hampstead. They later divorced and lived several doors from each other for some years.


Career

Tonks worked for the
BBC #REDIRECT BBC #REDIRECT BBC Here i going to introduce about the best teacher of my life b BALAJI sir. He is the precious gift that I got befor 2yrs . How has helped and thought all the concept and made my success in the 10th board exam. ...
...
, writing stories and reviewing poetry for the BBC European Service. She published poems in collections and ''
The Observer ''The Observer'' is a British newspaper published on Sundays. It is a sister paper to ''The Guardian'' and '' The Guardian Weekly'', whose parent company Guardian Media Group Limited acquired it in 1993. First published in 1791, it is the ...
'', the ''
New Statesman The ''New Statesman'' is a British Political magazine, 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 Webb, Sidney and Beatrice ...
'', ''
Transatlantic Review Transatlantic, Trans-Atlantic or TransAtlantic may refer to: Film * Transatlantic Pictures, a film production company from 1948 to 1950 * Transatlantic Enterprises, an American production company in the late 1970s * ''Transatlantic'' (1931 film), ...
'', ''
London Magazine ''The London Magazine'' is the title of six different publications that have appeared in succession since 1732. All six have focused on the arts, literature and miscellaneous topics. 1732–1785 ''The London Magazine, or, Gentleman's Monthly I ...
'', ''
Encounter Encounter or Encounters may refer to: Film *''Encounter'', a 1997 Indian film by Nimmala Shankar * ''Encounter'' (2013 film), a Bengali film * ''Encounter'' (2018 film), an American sci-fi film * ''Encounter'' (2021 film), a British sci-fi film * ...
'', and ''
Poetry Review ''Poetry Review'' is the magazine of The Poetry Society, edited by the poet Emily Berry. Founded in 1912, shortly after the establishment of the Society, previous editors have included poets Muriel Spark, Adrian Henri, Andrew Motion and Maurice R ...
'', she read on the BBC's ''
Third Programme The BBC Third Programme was a national radio station produced and broadcast from 1946 until 1967, when it was replaced by Radio 3. It first went on the air on 29 September 1946 and quickly became one of the leading cultural and intellectual f ...
''. She also wrote "poetic novels". Her work appears in many anthologies, including ''
Anthology of Twentieth-Century British and Irish Poetry ''Anthology of Twentieth-Century British and Irish Poetry'' is a poetry anthology edited by Keith Tuma, and published in 2001 by Oxford University Press. Tuma is an American academic, and author of the somewhat despairing ''Fishing by Obstinate ...
'' (ed. Keith Tuma), ''
Oxford Book of Twentieth Century English Verse ''The Oxford Book of Twentieth Century English Verse'' is a poetry anthology edited by Philip Larkin. It was published in 1973 by Oxford University Press with . Larkin writes in the short preface that the selection is wide rather than deep; and a ...
'', ''
British Poetry since 1945 ''British Poetry since 1945'' is a poetry anthology edited by Edward Lucie-Smith, first published in 1970 by Penguin Books. The anthology is a careful attempt to take account of the whole span of post-war British poetryMiddleton, Peter (2004"The ...
'', and '' The Firebox: Poetry in Britain and Ireland after 1945'' (ed. Sean O'Brien). Tonks published two collections, ''Notes on Cafés and Bedrooms'' (Putnam, 1963) and ''Iliad of Broken Sentences'' (Bodley Head, 1967), and after both books went out of print following each publisher's decision to axe their poetry lists, she was discussing a selected edition of her work with John Moat and John Fairfax's Phoenix Press in Newbury from 1976 until 1980, when the project was abandoned following her conversion to a puritanical form of Christianity. Little was known publicly about her subsequent life past that point. As Andrew Motion wrote in 2004, she "Disappeared! What happened? Because I admire her poems, I've been trying to find out for years... no trace of her seems to survive – apart from the writing she left behind." In the 30-minute
BBC Radio 4 BBC Radio 4 is a British national radio station owned and operated by the BBC that replaced the BBC Home Service in 1967. It broadcasts a wide variety of spoken-word programmes, including news, drama, comedy, science and history from the BBC' ...
''Lost Voices'' documentary, "The Poet Who Vanished", broadcast 29 March 2009, Brian Patten observed, from the literary world's perspective, she'd "evaporated into air like the
Cheshire cat The Cheshire Cat ( or ) is a fictional cat popularised by Lewis Carroll in ''Alice's Adventures in Wonderland'' and known for its distinctive mischievous grin. While now most often used in ''Alice''-related contexts, the association of a "Ch ...
"; Tonks had disappeared from public view and was living a hermetic existence, refusing telephone and personal calls from friends, family and the media. Following her death in April 2014, Neil Astley published an obituary and then an article in the ''Guardian'', followed by his introduction to the Bloodaxe collected edition of her poetry and selected prose, ''Bedouin of the London Evening'', in which he revealed the background to her "disappearance", how she had "turned her back on the literary world after a series of personal tragedies and medical crises which made her question the value of literature and embark on a restless, self-torturing spiritual quest". Her mental and physical health deteriorated following an emergency operation on New Year's Day 1978 to save her eyesight which left her almost blind for the next few years, and in 1979 she moved to Bournemouth to recuperate. In 1980 she moved into a house behind the seafront where she lived alone for the next 33 years, using her former married name, Rosemary Lightband. In 1981 she made the decision to "confront her profession" and burned the manuscript of an unpublished novel. That October she travelled to Jerusalem and was baptised near the River Jordan on 17 October 1981, the day before her 53rd birthday. "Obliterating her former identity as the writer Rosemary Tonks, she dated her new life from that ‘second birth’," according to Astley, and thereafter she never read any books apart from the Bible.


Character of her poetry

Tonks's poems offer a stylised view of an urban literary subculture around 1960, full of hedonism and decadence. The poet seems to veer from the ''ennui'' of
Charles Baudelaire Charles Pierre Baudelaire (, ; ; 9 April 1821 – 31 August 1867) was a French poet who also produced notable work as an essayist and art critic. His poems exhibit mastery in the handling of rhyme and rhythm, contain an exoticism inherited ...
to exuberant disbelief at modern civilisation. There are illicit love affairs in seedy hotels and scenes of café life across Europe and the Middle East; there are sage reflections on men who are shy with women. She often targets the pathetic pretensions of writers and intellectuals. Yet she is often buoyant and chatty, bemused rather than critical, even self-deprecating. She believed poetry should look good on a printed page as well as sound good when read: "There is an excitement for the ''eye'' in a poem on the page which is completely different from the ear's reaction". Of her style, she said "I have developed a visionary modern lyric, and, for it, an idiom in which I can write lyrically, colloquially, and dramatically. My subject is city life – with its sofas, hotel corridors, cinemas, underworlds, cardboard suitcases, self-willed buses, banknotes, soapy bathrooms, newspaper-filled parks; and its anguish, its enraged excitement, its great lonely joys." Her poem, "The Sofas, Fogs and Cinemas" ends: :— All this sitting about in cafés to calm down :Simply wears me out. And their idea of literature! :The idiotic cut of the stanzas; the novels, full up, gross. :I have lived it, and I know too much. :My café nerves are breaking me :With black, exhausting information.Lucie-Smith p.247


Novels

Writing novels in a highly personal style that at times approached the tone of
Evelyn Waugh Arthur Evelyn St. John Waugh (; 28 October 1903 – 10 April 1966) was an English writer of novels, biographies, and travel books; he was also a prolific journalist and book reviewer. His most famous works include the early satires '' Decl ...
in its cynical observations of urban living, Tonks as a novelist had a mixed critical reception at best, although her critics admit that her grasp of the English language and her sense of London are sharp. Her novels are a kind of fictional autobiography in which she plays not only the leading role but one or two supporting roles as well. She includes incidents and experiences directly from her past, often with only a thin fictional veil to disguise them. Some critics felt this was a fault and labelled the autobiographical dimension of her writing "feminine" in a pejorative sense; others decided her directness was invigorating and showed the uniqueness of her voice, making for a lively, distinct fictional world. Whatever the verdict, Tonks’ novels deal with aspects of her life up to 1972, when her last work was published. Her fiction, in particular, moved from a dissatisfaction with urban living found in both her collections of poetry and in satiric novels such as ''The Bloater'' and ''Businessmen as Lovers'' to a pronounced loathing of middle to upper-middle class materialism in her later work. Her distaste for materialism meant that Tonks also developed an interest in the symbolist movement, which eventually led her to a conception of spirituality as the only alternative to materialism. This embrace of what she called "the invisible world" may have ultimately led her to distrust the act of writing itself, and caused her to abandon writing as a career.


Assessment of her work

Critics praised Tonks as a cosmopolitan poet of considerable innovation and originality. She has been described as one of the very few modern English poets who has genuinely tried to learn something from modern French poets such as
Paul Éluard Paul Éluard (), born Eugène Émile Paul Grindel (; 14 December 1895 – 18 November 1952), was a French poet and one of the founders of the Surrealist movement. In 1916, he chose the name Paul Éluard, a matronymic borrowed from his maternal ...
about symbolism and surrealism.
Al Alvarez Alfred Alvarez (5 August 1929 – 23 September 2019) was an English poet, novelist, essayist and critic who published under the name A. Alvarez and Al Alvarez. Background Alfred Alvarez was born in London, to an Ashkenazic Jewish mother and a ...
said ''Notes on Cafés and Bedrooms'' showed "an original sensibility in motion".Lucie-Smith p.245
Edward Lucie-Smith John Edward McKenzie Lucie-Smith (born 27 February 1933), known as Edward Lucie-Smith, is a Jamaican-born English writer, poet, art critic, curator and broadcaster. He has been highly prolific in these fields, writing or editing over a hundred ...
said "the movements of an individual awareness – often rather self-conscious in its singularity – supply the themes of most of her work." Daisy Goodwin commented on her poem, "Story of a Hotel Room", about infidelity: "This poem should be read by anyone about to embark on an affair thinking that it's just a fling. It is much harder than you know to separate sex from love."Daisy Goodwin. (2004). "Poems to Last a Lifetime". Quoted i
Andrew O'Hagan. (9 November 2004). "Selling poems to the people". ''Daily Telegraph''.
Accessed 12 January 2007


Publications


Poetry

* ''Notes on Cafés and Bedrooms'' (Putnam, 1963) * ''Iliad of Broken Sentences'' (Bodley Head, 1967) * ''Bedouin of the London Evening: Collected Poems'' ( Bloodaxe Books, 2014)


Novels

* ''Opium Fogs'' (Putnam, 1963) * ''Emir'' (Adam Books, 1963 or 1964) * ''The Bloater'' (Bodley Head, 1968) * ''Businessmen as Lovers'' (Bodley Head, 1969); US title, ''Love Among the Operators'' (1970) * ''The Way Out of Berkeley Square'' (Bodley Head, 1970) * ''The Halt during the Chase'' (Bodley Head, 1972)


Children's books

* ''On Wooden Wings: The Adventures of Webster'' (John Murray, 1948) * ''Wild Sea Goose'' (John Murray, 1951)


References


Sources

* Lucie-Smith, Edward (1970), ''
British Poetry since 1945 ''British Poetry since 1945'' is a poetry anthology edited by Edward Lucie-Smith, first published in 1970 by Penguin Books. The anthology is a careful attempt to take account of the whole span of post-war British poetryMiddleton, Peter (2004"The ...
''.


Further reading

* Tuma, Keith (ed), ''Anthology of Twentieth-Century British and Irish Poetry''. Contains a biography of Tonks credited to "Tuma" *


External links


Backlisted Podcast: Rosemary Tonks: ''The Bloater''

''Lost Voices - Rosemary Tonks'', BBC Radio documentary, March 2009

The Exploding Library: ''The Bloater'' by Rosemary Tonks, BBC 2022
{{DEFAULTSORT:Tonks, Rosemary 1932 births 2014 deaths Writers from London English women poets English expatriates in Pakistan 20th-century English poets 20th-century English women writers