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Words on the West Wind: Selected Essays from The Adelphi, 1924-1950 - Henry Williamson Collections, #8

Edition en anglais

  • Henry Williamson

  • Paru le : 14/06/2013
The Adelphi was an English literary journal founded by John Middleton Murry and published between 1922 and 1955. Noted contributors included Katherine... > Lire la suite
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The Adelphi was an English literary journal founded by John Middleton Murry and published between 1922 and 1955. Noted contributors included Katherine Mansfield, D. H. Lawrence, H. E Bates, and Henry Williamson. For a brief period - three issues only, beginning with the October-December 1948 issue - Henry Williamson took over the editorship from Middleton Murry, before handing the magazine on to George Godwin.
However, Williamson's first contribution to the magazine was in September 1924, with a short essay (included here), 'The Doom of the Peregrine Falcon'. Also selected for inclusion are a number of important essays - for example, 'The Lost Legions' and 'Notes of a 'Prentice Hand' - together with 'A Note on Tarka the Otter' (which includes the original ending to that classic of nature writing) and Williamson's five editorial pieces which have the overall title of 'Words on the West Wind'.
The distinguished Cornish poet, Charles Causley, is also represented here, with his 'Man into Fox', an insightful essay on the importance to him of Henry Williamson's writing. Williamson championed many young writers, and none more so than James Farrar, who served in the RAF during the Second World War and was killed in 1944, aged just 20. A talented writer but unpublished at his death, Farrar left behind poems and prose of a high quality.
Williamson published several pieces by Farrar in The Adelphi, which are included here - 'Hayfield' and 'Atlantic Coast', and other fragments. Williamson both edited and wrote the introduction to the collected works of Farrar, The Unreturning Spring, first published in 1950. Anne Williamson contributes an introduction to this collection, 'The West Wind Blows Again' providing the background to Williamson's involvement with The Adelphi, while Richard Williamson, Henry's son, waxes lyrical on 'That Damned Motorcar' (HW's temperamental Aston Martin, which plays its part in Williamson's editorials).

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À propos de l'auteur

Biographie de Henry Williamson

The writer Henry Williamson was born in London in 1895. Naturalist, soldier, journalist, farmer, motor enthusiast and author of over fifty books, his descriptions of nature and the First World War have been highly praised for their accuracy. He is best known as the author of Tarka the Otter, which won the Hawthornden Prize for Literature in 1928 and was filmed in 1977. By one of those extraordinary coincidences, Henry Williamson died while the crew were actually filming the death scene of Tarka.
His writing falls into clear groups:1) Nature writings, of which Tarka the Otter and Salar the Salmon are the most well known, but which also include, amongst many others, The Peregrine's Saga, The Old Stag and The Phasian Bird.2) Henry Williamson served throughout the First World War. The Wet Flanders Plain, A Patriot's Progress, and no less than five books of the 15-volume Chronicle of Ancient Sunlight (How Dear is Life, A Fox Under My Cloak, The Golden Virgin, Love and the Loveless and A Test to Destruction) cover the reality of the years 1914-1918, both in England and on the Western Front.3) A further grouping concerns the social history aspect of his work in the 'Village' books (The Village Book and The Labouring Life), the four-volume Flax of Dream and the volumes of the Chronicle.
But all of these groups can be found in any of his books. Some readers are only interested in a particular aspect of his writing, but to truly understand Henry Williamson's achievement it is necessary to take account of all of his books, for their extent reflects his complex character. The whole of life, the human, animal and plant worlds, can be found within his writings. He was a man of difficult temperament but he had a depth of talent that he used to the full.
The Henry Williamson Society was founded in 1980, and has published a number of collections of Williamson's journalism, which are now being published as e-books.
 Henry Williamson - Words on the West Wind: Selected Essays from The Adelphi, 1924-1950 - Henry Williamson Collections, #8.
Words on the West Wind: Selected Essays from...
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