Walter James Redfern Turner bust by Lady Ottoline Morrell

Walter James Redfern Turner (13 October 1884 – 18 November 1946) was an Australian-born, English-domiciled writer and critic.McKenna, C. W. F., (1990). nline
Turner, Walter James Redfern (1884–1946)
, ''

Australian Dictionary of Biography The ''Australian Dictionary of Biography'' (ADB or AuDB) is a national co-operative enterprise founded and maintained by the Australian National University (ANU) to produce authoritative biographical articles on eminent people in Australia ...

'', Volume 12, National Centre of Biography,

Australian National University The Australian National University (ANU) is a public research university located in Canberra, the capital of Australia. Its main campus in Acton encompasses seven teaching and research colleges, in addition to several national academies and ...

Melbourne University Press Melbourne University Publishing (MUP) is the book publishing arm of the University of Melbourne. History MUP was founded in 1922 as Melbourne University Press to sell text books and stationery to students, and soon began publishing books itself. ...

, accessed 28 October 2012.

Life

Born in

South Melbourne South Melbourne is an inner suburb in Melbourne, Victoria, Australia, 3 km south of Melbourne's Central Business District, located within the City of Port Phillip local government area. South Melbourne recorded a population of 11,548 at ...

, the son of a church musician – organist at

St Paul's Cathedral St Paul's Cathedral is an Anglican cathedral in London and is the seat of the Bishop of London. The cathedral serves as the mother church of the Diocese of London. It is on Ludgate Hill at the highest point of the City of London and is a G ...

– and

warehouseman A warehouseman can be someone who works in a warehouse, usually delivering goods for sale or storage, or, in older usage, someone who owns a warehouse and sells goods directly from it or from a shop fronting onto the warehouse (similar to a modern ...

, Walter James Turner, and Alice May (née Watson), he was educated at Carlton State School, Scotch College and the Working Men's College. In 1907 he left for England to pursue a career in writing. There he met and befriended a number of literary intellectual figures, including

Siegfried Sassoon Siegfried Loraine Sassoon (8 September 1886 – 1 September 1967) was an English war poet, writer, and soldier. Decorated for bravery on the Western Front, he became one of the leading poets of the First World War. His poetry both describ ...

Virginia Woolf Adeline Virginia Woolf (; ; 25 January 1882 28 March 1941) was an English writer, considered one of the most important modernist 20th-century authors and a pioneer in the use of stream of consciousness as a narrative device. Woolf was born i ...

Vita Sackville-West Victoria Mary, Lady Nicolson, CH (née Sackville-West; 9 March 1892 – 2 June 1962), usually known as Vita Sackville-West, was an English author and garden designer. Sackville-West was a successful novelist, poet and journalist, as wel ...

, and

Lady Ottoline Morrell Lady Ottoline Violet Anne Morrell (16 June 1873 – 21 April 1938) was an English aristocrat and society hostess. Her patronage was influential in artistic and intellectual circles, where she befriended writers including Aldous Huxley, Siegf ...

(the caricature of her in his book ''The Aesthetes'' ended their friendship). On 5 April 1918, in Chelsea, he married Delphine Marguerite Dubuis (died 1951). During the period from the First World War until the mid-1930s, he was known primarily as a poet. His 1916 ''Romance'' ("Chimborazo, Cotopaxi....") is probably the best remembered of his poems.

W. B. Yeats William Butler Yeats (13 June 186528 January 1939) was an Irish poet, dramatist, writer and one of the foremost figures of 20th-century literature. He was a driving force behind the Irish Literary Revival and became a pillar of the Irish liter ...

had the highest praise for Turner's poetry, saying that it left him "lost in admiration and astonishment", and included some of it in his ''Oxford Book of Modern Poetry'' (while omitting several authors very much better known today for their verse, such as

Wilfred Owen Wilfred Edward Salter Owen MC (18 March 1893 – 4 November 1918) was an English poet and soldier. He was one of the leading poets of the First World War. His war poetry on the horrors of trenches and gas warfare was much influenced by ...

). But today, although Turner produced several novels and plays, as well as books of poems, his reputation rests on his biographies of the composers

Mozart Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart (27 January 17565 December 1791), baptised as Joannes Chrysostomus Wolfgangus Theophilus Mozart, was a prolific and influential composer of the Classical period. Despite his short life, his rapid pace of composition r ...

Beethoven Ludwig van Beethoven (baptised 17 December 177026 March 1827) was a German composer and pianist. Beethoven remains one of the most admired composers in the history of Western music; his works rank amongst the most performed of the classical ...

and Berlioz. His ''Mozart'' has been reprinted many times since it was first published in 1938. Some of his music articles for 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 o ...

'' (where he was music critic between 1915 and 1940) and other journals were reprinted in ''Music and Life'', ''Facing the Music'', ''Musical Meanderings'', and ''Variations on the theme of Music''. Turner was musically untrained, and in the words of the music critic Charles Reid, "unhampered by any excess of technical knowledge" to restrain his "racy dogmatism". Notoriously, on the fiftieth anniversary of

Richard Wagner Wilhelm Richard Wagner ( ; ; 22 May 181313 February 1883) was a German composer, theatre director, polemicist, and conductor who is chiefly known for his operas (or, as some of his mature works were later known, "music dramas"). Unlike most op ...

's death, he wrote: “I can confidently and in soberness declare that Wagner is a colossal fraud.” Turner was a close friend of the pianist

Artur Schnabel Artur Schnabel (17 April 1882 – 15 August 1951) was an Austrian-American classical pianist, composer and pedagogue. Schnabel was known for his intellectual seriousness as a musician, avoiding pure technical bravura. Among the 20th centur ...

, about whom he frequently wrote, and with whom he frequently went hiking. He was a champion of

Arturo Toscanini Arturo Toscanini (; ; March 25, 1867January 16, 1957) was an Italian conductor. He was one of the most acclaimed and influential musicians of the late 19th and early 20th century, renowned for his intensity, his perfectionism, his ear for orch ...

's conducting, which was for him a revelation in structure and expression.

was another close friend of Turner, at least for a while. Turner, his wife, and Sassoon all cohabited a house in London, No 54

Tufton Street Tufton Street is a road in Westminster, London, located just outside of the Westminster Abbey precinct. Built by its namesake Sir Richard Tufton during the 17th century, today it hosts a number of right-leaning lobby groups and thinktanks. As a ...

, before Sassoon moved out in 1925. After this he fell out with Turner so badly that he made no mention whatsoever of him in his autobiography. During the Second World War, he was general editor of the series of short illustrated books "Britain in Pictures", for which he wrote the volumes on music and ballet, and edited seven omnibus volumes. On 18 November 1946 he died at Hammersmith of a

cerebral thrombosis A thrombus (plural thrombi), colloquially called a blood clot, is the final product of the blood coagulation step in hemostasis. There are two components to a thrombus: aggregated platelets and red blood cells that form a plug, and a mesh of cr ...

Works

Poetry

* ''The Hunter and other Poems'' (1916) * ''The Dark Fire'' (1918) * ''The Dark Wind'' (1920) this was a compilation of poems from ''The Hunter'', ''The Dark Fire'', and ''In Time Like Glass'' published in America. * ''In Time Like Glass'' (1921) * ''Paris and Helen'' (1921) * ''Landscape of Cytherea'' (Record of a Journey into a Strange Country) (1923) * ''The Seven Days of the Sun'' (1925) * ''Marigold: An Idyll of the Sea'' (1926) * ''New Poems'' (1928) * ''Miss America'' (1930) * ''Pursuit of Psyche'' (1931) * ''Jack and Jill'' (1934) * ''Songs and Incantations'' (1936) which included his ''Seven Sciagraphical Poems'' * ''Selected Poems 1916–36'' (1939) * ''Fossils of a Future Time?'' (1946) * ''Romance'' (1946)

Plays

* ''The Man Who Ate the Popomack'' (1921) * ''Smaragda's lover'' (1925) * '' Jupiter Translated'' (unpublished; first performed 1933)

Other books

* ''Music and life'' (1921) * ''Variations on the theme of'' music (1924) * ''Orpheus; or, The music of the future'' (1926) * ''Beethoven, the search for reality'' (1927) * ''Musical meanderings'' (1928) * ''A trip to New York and a poem'' (1929) * ''Eighteenth century poetry : an anthology'' chosen by W.J. Turner (1931) * ''Wagner'' (1933) * ''Facing the Music: Reflections of a Music Critic'' (1933) * ''Berlioz: The Man and His Work'' (1934) * ''Blow for Balloons'' (1935) Novel. * ''Mozart, the man and his works'' (1938) * ''The Duchess of Popocatapetl'' (1939) Novel. *''English Music'' (1941; "Britain in Pictures", no. 3) * ''Fables, Parables and Plots: Revolutionary Stories for the Young and Old'' (1943) *''The English Ballet'' (1944; "Britain in Pictures", no. 80) * ''A Treasury of English wild life'' edited by W.J. Turner (1946) * ''Music, a short history'' (1949)

References

Sources

* *

External links

* * * W. J. Turner read
"Romance"
{{DEFAULTSORT:Turner, Walter James Australian non-fiction writers Australian poets 20th-century British novelists British music critics 1884 births 1946 deaths Deaths from cerebral thrombosis British male poets British male novelists British male dramatists and playwrights 20th-century British poets 20th-century British dramatists and playwrights 20th-century British male writers Male non-fiction writers