Rosamond Lehmann with her brother John and Lytton Strachey

Rudolf John Frederick Lehmann (2 June 1907 – 7 April 1987) was an English poet and man of letters. He founded the periodicals ''

New Writing ''New Writing'' was a popular literary periodical in book format founded in 1936 by John Lehmann and committed to anti-fascism.''The Collected Essays, Journalism and Letters of George Orwell, Volume 1 – An Age Like This 1939–1940'', p. 250 ...

'' and '' The London Magazine'', and the publishing house of John Lehmann Limited.

Biography

Born in

Bourne End, Buckinghamshire Bourne End is a village mostly in the parish of Wooburn, but partly in that of Little Marlow in Buckinghamshire, England. It is about five miles (8 km) south-east of High Wycombe and three miles (5 km) east of Marlow, near the bounda ...

, the fourth child of journalist Rudolph Lehmann, and brother of Helen Lehmann, novelist Rosamond Lehmann and actress

Beatrix Lehmann Beatrix Alice Lehmann (1 July 1903 – 31 July 1979) was a British actress, theatre director, writer and novelist. Early life and family Lehmann was born in Bourne End, Buckinghamshire. She came from a family of notable achievers: the third o ...

, he was educated at Eton and read English at

Trinity College, Cambridge Trinity College is a constituent college of the University of Cambridge. Founded in 1546 by King Henry VIII, Trinity is one of the largest Cambridge colleges, with the largest financial endowment of any college at either Cambridge or Oxford. ...

. He considered his time at both as "lost years". At Trinity, Lehmann had a passionate relationship with Virginia Woolf's nephew, Quentin Bell. After a period as a journalist in

Vienna en, Viennese , iso_code = AT-9 , registration_plate = W , postal_code_type = Postal code , postal_code = , timezone = CET , utc_offset = +1 , timezone_DST ...

, he returned to England to found the popular periodical ''New Writing'' (1936–40) in book format. This literary magazine sought to break down social barriers and published works by working-class authors as well as educated middle-class writers and poets. It proved a great influence on literature of the period and an outlet for writers such as Christopher Isherwood,

W. H. Auden Wystan Hugh Auden (; 21 February 1907 – 29 September 1973) was a British-American poet. Auden's poetry was noted for its stylistic and technical achievement, its engagement with politics, morals, love, and religion, and its variety in ...

,"John Lehmann"
''

Encyclopædia Britannica The (Latin for "British Encyclopædia") is a general knowledge English-language encyclopaedia. It is published by Encyclopædia Britannica, Inc.; the company has existed since the 18th century, although it has changed ownership various t ...

''. Retrieved 28 December 2013.

Edward Upward Edward Falaise Upward, FRSL (9 September 1903 – 13 February 2009) was a British novelist and short story writer who, prior to his death, was believed to be the UK's oldest living author. Initially gaining recognition amongst the Auden Group as ...

and miner-author B. L. Coombes. Lehmann included many of these authors in his anthology '' Poems for Spain'' which he edited with

Stephen Spender Sir Stephen Harold Spender (28 February 1909 – 16 July 1995) was an English poet, novelist and essayist whose work concentrated on themes of social injustice and the class struggle. He was appointed Poet Laureate Consultant in Poetry by th ...

. With the onset of the Second World War and paper rationing, ''New Writing's'' future was uncertain and so Lehmann wrote ''New Writing in Europe'' for Pelican Books, one of the first critical summaries of the writers of the 1930s in which he championed the authors who had been the stars of ''New Writing''—Auden and Spender—and also his close friend

Tom Wintringham Thomas Henry Wintringham (15 May 1898 – 16 August 1949) was a British soldier, military historian, journalist, poet, Marxist, politician and author. He was a supporter of the Home Guard during the Second World War and was one of the founder ...

and Wintringham's ally, the emerging George Orwell. Wintringham reintroduced Lehmann to Allen Lane of

Penguin Books Penguin Books is a British publishing house. It was co-founded in 1935 by Allen Lane with his brothers Richard and John, as a line of the publishers The Bodley Head, only becoming a separate company the following year.The Penguin New Writing'' a monthly book-magazine, this time in paperback. The first issue featured Orwell's essay "

Shooting an Elephant "Shooting an Elephant" is an essay by British writer George Orwell, first published in the literary magazine '' New Writing'' in late 1936 and broadcast by the BBC Home Service on 12 October 1948. The essay describes the experience of the Englis ...

". Occasional hardback editions combined with the magazine ''Daylight'' appeared sporadically, but it was as ''Penguin New Writing'' that the magazine survived until 1950. He joined

Leonard Leonard or ''Leo'' is a common English masculine given name and a surname. The given name and surname originate from the Old High German ''Leonhard'' containing the prefix ''levon'' ("lion") from the Greek Λέων ("lion") through the Latin '' L ...

and

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 ...

as managing director of

Hogarth Press The Hogarth Press is a book publishing imprint of Penguin Random House that was founded as an independent company in 1917 by British authors Leonard Woolf and Virginia Woolf. It was named after their house in Richmond (then in Surrey and n ...

between 1938 and 1946. He then established his own publishing company, John Lehmann Limited, with his novelist sister Rosamond Lehmann (who had a nine-year affair with one of Lehmann's contributing poets, Cecil Day-Lewis). They published new works by authors such as

Sartre Jean-Paul Charles Aymard Sartre (, ; ; 21 June 1905 – 15 April 1980) was one of the key figures in the philosophy of existentialism (and phenomenology), a French playwright, novelist, screenwriter, political activist, biographer, and lite ...

, Kazantzakis and Stendhal, and discovered talents like Thom Gunn and Laurie Lee. He also published the first two books by the cookery writer

Elizabeth David Elizabeth David CBE (born Elizabeth Gwynne, 26 December 1913 – 22 May 1992) was a British cookery writer. In the mid-20th century she strongly influenced the revitalisation of home cookery in her native country and beyond with articles and bo ...

, ''

A Book of Mediterranean Food ''A Book of Mediterranean Food'' was an influential cookery book written by Elizabeth David in 1950, her first, and published by John Lehmann. After years of rationing and wartime austerity, the book brought light and colour back to English c ...

'' and '' French Country Cooking''. He published two of

Denton Welch Maurice Denton Welch (29 March 1915 – 30 December 1948) was a British writer and painter, admired for his vivid prose and precise descriptions. Life Welch was born in Shanghai, China, to Arthur Joseph Welch, a wealthy British rubber merchant, ...

's posthumous works: '' A Voice Through a Cloud'' (for which he supplied the title) (1950) and '' A Last Sheaf'' (1951). This publishing house published book series including the Chiltern Library, the Holiday Library and the Modern European Library. It operated from 1946–53.''Encyclopædia Britannica'' online
''s.v.'' John Lehmann
/ref> In 1954 he founded '' The London Magazine'', remaining as editor until 1961, following which he was a frequent lecturer and completed his three-volume autobiography, ''Whispering Gallery'' (1955), ''I Am My Brother'' (1960) and ''The Ample Proposition'' (1966). ''In The Purely Pagan Sense'' (1976) is an autobiographical record of his homosexual life in England and pre-war Germany, discreetly written in the form of a novel. He also wrote the biographies ''Edith Sitwell'' (1952), ''Virginia Woolf and her World'' (1975), ''Thrown to the Woolfs'' (1978), ''Rupert Brooke'' (1980) and ''Christopher Isherwood. A Personal Memoir'' (1987). His book ''Three Literary Friendships'' (1983), deals with the relationships between

Lord Byron George Gordon Byron, 6th Baron Byron (22 January 1788 – 19 April 1824), known simply as Lord Byron, was an English romantic poet and peer. He was one of the leading figures of the Romantic movement, and has been regarded as among the ...

and Percy Shelley,

Arthur Rimbaud Jean Nicolas Arthur Rimbaud (, ; 20 October 1854 – 10 November 1891) was a French poet known for his transgressive and surreal themes and for his influence on modern literature and arts, prefiguring surrealism. Born in Charleville, he start ...

and

Paul Verlaine Paul-Marie Verlaine (; ; 30 March 1844 – 8 January 1896) was a French poet associated with the Symbolist movement and the Decadent movement. He is considered one of the greatest representatives of the '' fin de siècle'' in international and ...

, Robert Frost and Edward Thomas. In 1965 he published ''Christ the Hunter'', a spiritual/autobiographical prose poem which had been broadcast in 1964 on the

BBC 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 ...

, In 1974 Lehmann published a book of poems, ''The Reader at Night,'' hand-printed on handmade paper and hand-bound in an edition of 250 signed copies (Toronto, Basilike, 1974). An essay by Paul Davies about the creation of this book is included in Professor A.T. Tolley's collection, ''John Lehmann: a Tribute'' (Ottawa; Carleton University Press, 1987), which also includes pieces by Roy Fuller, Thom Gunn, Charles Osborne, Christopher Levenson,

Jeremy Reed Jeremy Thomas Reed (born June 15, 1981) is an American former professional baseball outfielder in Major League Baseball (MLB). Early life Reed graduated from Bonita High School in La Verne, California in 1999, and went on to play college basebal ...

George Woodcock George Woodcock (; May 8, 1912 – January 28, 1995) was a Canadian writer of political biography and history, an anarchist thinker, a philosopher, an essayist and literary critic. He was also a poet and published several volumes of travel wri ...

, and others. Lehmann died in London in April 1987.

Poets featured in ''Penguin New Writing''

* George Barker * David Gascoyne * Robert Graves *

Bernard Gutteridge Bernard Hugh Gutteridge (1916–1985) was an English poet, novelist, and playwright. He is primarily known for his war poems, considered "verse-journalism of a very high order" by Vernon Scannell. Early life and education Son of Capt. Bernar ...

* Norman Hampson *

Arthur Harvey Arthur Harvey (September 26, 1895 – March 22, 1976) was an American businessman best known as the namesake of the Harvey Park neighborhood of Denver. Early life and World War I Harvey was born in Edom, Texas. At age 16 he left school to do manu ...

John Heath-Stubbs John Francis Alexander Heath-Stubbs (9 July 1918 – 26 December 2006) was an English poet and translator. He is known for verse influenced by classical myths, and for a long Arthurian poem, ''Artorius'' (1972). Biography and works Heath-Stub ...

Hamish Henderson Hamish Scott Henderson (11 November 1919 – 9 March 2002) was a Scottish poet, songwriter, communist, intellectual and soldier. He was a catalyst for the folk revival in Scotland. He was also an accomplished folk song collector and dis ...

* Peter Hewett * Gillian Hughes * Pierre Jean Jouve * Laurie Lee * John Lehmann * Alun Lewis * C. Day-Lewis * Lawrence Little *

Federico García Lorca Federico del Sagrado Corazón de Jesús García Lorca (5 June 1898 – 19 August 1936), known as Federico García Lorca ( ), was a Spanish poet, playwright, and theatre director. García Lorca achieved international recognition as an emblemat ...

* David Luke * Joseph Macleod * Louis MacNeice * H. B. Mallalieu * Ewart Milne *

Nicholas Moore Nicholas Moore (16 November 1918 – 26 January 1986) was an English poet, associated with the New Apocalyptics in the 1940s, whose reputation stood as high as Dylan Thomas’s. He later dropped out of the literary world. Biography Moore wa ...

* Vitĕslav Nezval * Norman Nicholson *

William Plomer William Charles Franklyn Plomer (10 December 1903 – 20 September 1973) was a South African and British novelist, poet and literary editor. He also wrote a series of librettos for Benjamin Britten. He wrote some of his poetry under the pseud ...

Pandelis Prevelakis Pandelis Prevelakis ( el, Παντελής Πρεβελάκης, sometimes transliterated Panteles Prevelakes; 18 February 1909 – 15 March 1986) was a Greek novelist, poet, dramatist and essayist—one of the leading Greek prose writers of the " ...

* F. T. Prince * Henry Reed *

Anne Ridler Anne Barbara Ridler OBE (née Bradby) (30 July 1912 – 15 October 2001) was a British poet and Faber and Faber editor, selecting the Faber ''A Little Book of Modern Verse'' with T. S. Eliot (1941). Her ''Collected Poems'' (Carcanet Press ...

* Michael Riviere * Alan Ross *

May Sarton May Sarton was the pen name of Eleanore Marie Sarton (May 3, 1912 – July 16, 1995), a Belgian-American poet, novelist and memoirist. Although her best work is strongly personalised with erotic female imagery, she resisted the label of ‘lesb ...

* George Seferis *

Jaroslav Seifert Jaroslav Seifert (; 23 September 1901 – 10 January 1986) was a Czech writer, poet and journalist. Seifert was awarded the 1984 Nobel Prize in Literature "for his poetry which endowed with freshness, sensuality and rich inventiveness provides ...

Edith Sitwell Dame Edith Louisa Sitwell (7 September 1887 – 9 December 1964) was a British poet and critic and the eldest of the three literary Sitwells. She reacted badly to her eccentric, unloving parents and lived much of her life with her governess ...

* W. F. M. Stewart *

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 ...

* A. S. J. Tessimond * Dylan Thomas * Dunstan Thompson *

Terence Tiller Terence Rogers Tiller (19 September 1916 – 24 December 1987) was an English poet and radio producer. Early life, poet Tiller was born in Truro, Cornwall and educated at Latymer Upper School in Hammersmith.Obituary, ''The Times'', 5 January 198 ...

* Robert Waller * Diana Witherby * L. J. Yates *

Peter Yates Peter James Yates (24 July 1929 – 9 January 2011) was an English film director and producer. Biography Early life Yates was born in Aldershot, Hampshire. The son of an army officer, he attended Charterhouse School as a boy, graduated from ...

References

Bibliography

* * Adrian Wright, ''John Lehmann: A Pagan Adventure'' (London: Duckworth, 1998) * Gale Literary Databases,"(Rudolph) John (Frederick) Lehmann," * David Hughes. "Lehmann, (Rudolph) John Frederick (1907-1987)," * Petra Rau, University of Portsmouth. "John Lehmann." The Literary Encyclopedia. 21 Mar. 2002. The Literary Dictionary Company.

External links

American libraries owning works related to LehmannLehmann and the London Magazine
{{DEFAULTSORT:Lehmann, John 1907 births 1987 deaths Lehmann family Alumni of Trinity College, Cambridge English magazine editors English memoirists British gay writers LGBT memoirists English LGBT writers People educated at Eton College English LGBT poets 20th-century English poets Penguin Books people 20th-century male writers 20th-century LGBT people

Biography

Poets featured in ''Penguin New Writing''

See also

References

Bibliography

External links