Edward Shanks

Edward Richard Buxton Shanks (born June 11, 1892 in London - † May 4, 1953 ) was a British poet , writer and literary critic .

Edward Shanks was initially considered a pure war poet ( war poet ) of the First World War , later he was perceived more as an academic and journalist , finally as the author of biographies on the person of Hilaire Belloc , Edgar Allan Poe and Rudyard Kipling . He also wrote some works that are definitely considered science fiction .

life and work

Shanks, who was born in London, attended the Merchant Taylors' School and studied at Trinity College in Cambridge until his bachelor's degree in history in 1913.

1912–1913 he was editor of The Granta magazine . He served from 1914 to the First World War in the 8th South Lancashire Regiment as a second lieutenant in the British Army in France . As early as 1915 he was classified as an invalid , which meant he was entrusted with administrative tasks until the end of the war. In 1919 he was the first recipient of the Hawthornden Prize for The Queen of China and Other Poems . He wrote for Robert Graves ' magazine The Owl for quite a while . Rupert Brooke , who had known him from Cambridge University, introduced him to Edward Marsh . This took his works in the collection Georgian Poetry 1918-19 (1919) and Georgian Poetry 1920-22 (1922). However, Shanks reserved himself an ambivalent attitude towards Georgian Poetry, the third volume of which he initially criticized rather negatively. If he had declined to participate in earlier volumes, he agreed to the fourth volume, encouraged by his editor, John Squire, although he was somewhat shy of the project. In general, Shanks seemed to unite two souls as an editor like a poet, so he rejected Edith Sitwell's recommendation as editor , just as he later condemned his own selection as a poet of Fredegond Shove . Nevertheless, the friendly tone remained, as 41 letters that Shanks exchanged with colleagues between 1914 and 1953 testified. Solidarity only broke shortly before his death when Shanks criticized his colleague Robert Nichols . Significantly, he characterized the way of life of his colleagues by the fact that, although they all had their center of life in a large British city, they could not bear it.

Shanks worked as a longtime literary critic for the London Mercury, where he was also deputy editor from 1919 to 1922. As a critic, he and the actual editor Sir John Squire drew the displeasure of his fellow writers, such as Osbert Sitwell , who caricatured the two in Jolly Old Squire (1922) . On the other hand, Shanks was one of those literary critics who had participated in the First World War and thus recognized the potential of Arnold Zweig's The Dispute over Sergeant Grischa in the English translation of 1928 together with his editor: "Herr Zweig will have written the best war novel since Tolstoy " . In general, Shanks also discussed historical works of the past, such as Edward Gibbon's complete works on the collapse of the Roman Empire , as well as works on contemporary politics, culture or areas of science fiction, such as B. HG Wells , and Sydney Fowler Wright , whom he particularly favored, making him a respected and feared critic.

In addition, Shanks also wrote theater reviews for The Outlook , where his biting ridicule was known. On the occasion of a production of Edward II by Christopher Marlowe at The Regent Theater in London , he wrote in 1923 about the actress Gwen Ffrancon-Davies and her colleague Duncan Yarrow , who played the eponymous hero: “Miss Gwen Ffrancon-Davies was not at all good as Queen Isabella: her realistic sobs and groans were hopelessly out of the proper key. (...) Perhaps everyone was rattled a little by fear of collapse of Mr. Duncan Yarrow: It is disturbing to have on the stage an actor who may not be able to continue his part to the end ".

In addition, between 1921 and 1922, Shanks seems to have created the libretto for the opera or Fête galante Dance Dream based on a story by Maurice Baring in collaboration with the composer and suffragette Ethel Smyth . His inclination towards music was also expressed by the fact that he reviewed musicals and other music performances for various magazines , such as George Gershwin's Primrose .

In 1926 he worked briefly as a lecturer in poetics at Liverpool University. From 1928 to 1935 he wrote editorials for the Evening Standard in London.

reception

The British writer Robin Skelton , a close friend of Ruth Pitter , criticized Shank's poems for being too simple, neither challenging nor particularly emotional.

Edward Shanks Songs , vocal texts distributed as sixpenny folder in 1915, were small, simple ballads , well-rhymed, which did not have the lively spirit of popular songs, but due to their similar charm should experience a successful tradition and have been set to music several times to this day.

The People of the Ruins was considered a typical social utopia of the 1920s, which was written more frequently in the United Kingdom at that time. In it, Shanks looks at a Europe, and especially England, a decade after it was overwhelmed by a communist revolution . As the title suggests, all traces of civilization have disappeared and the population lives in the ruins of their cities. From today's perspective, the science fiction novella is described as shockingly poor in direct comparison with contemporary works of the genre given Edward Shank's literary reputation, although some elements of his book were picked up by better science fiction writers. Apparently there was even a comic - adaptation of his work in the late 1960s. Interestingly enough, Edward Shanks considered the phenomenon of science fiction to be worthy of literary investigation as early as 1930 in an article on the New Statesman , while his fellow critic Clarence Dane disparaged it in 1936 as " nonsense " or "American fairy tale".

In his study on Kipling, which he himself wrote shortly before the Second World War and which was only published in 1940, Shanks expressed very cautious criticism and only tried to correct a few misinterpretations of Kipling. For this he was downright attacked by VS Pritchett .

In 1948 Daily Graphic published two volumes of prose and poetry by Arthur Bryant and Edward Shanks, with the distinctive titles Trafalgar and Alamein and Dunkirk / The Great Miracle . Both volumes were widely used in schools and libraries . The first title speaks for itself in juxtaposing the Battle of Trafalgar in 1805 and the events of the first and second battles of El Alamein in 1942. The second volume associated the miracle of Dunkirk at the Battle of Dunkirk with England through Operation Dynamo in 1940 by Horatio Nelson and Alfred the Great . In particular, Shank's cycle of poems about Dunkirk compared Adolf Hitler's Stukas with the Roman invasion and the hordes of Genghis Khan . Shank's poetry is described by English literary scholars as impressive, but the historical parallels are too extreme.

Works

Poems

• Songs. 1915
• Poems. 1916
• The Queen of China and Other Poems , 1919
• The Island of Youth and Other Poems. 1921
• The Shadowgraph and Other Poems. 1925
• Collected Poems (1900-1925). 1926
• Poems 1912-1932. 1933
• Trafalgar and Alamein and Dunkirk / The Great Miracle . 1948, with Arthur Bryant
• Poems 1939-1952. 1953

Short stories, novels

• The Old Indispensables. 1919, novella
• The People of the Ruins. 1920, novella
• The Richest Man. 1923, novella
• Queer Street. 1933
• The Enchanted Village. 1933 (A sequel to "Queer Street")
• Tom Tiddler's Ground. 1934
• Old King Cole. 1936, novella

Reviews, essays

• First Essays On Literature. 1923, literary critical essays
• Bernard Shaw. 1924, reviews
• Second Essays On Literature. W.Collins Sons & Co. Ltd., London 1927, reviews

Biographies

• Hilaire Belloc, the man and his work. 1916 together with C. Creighton Mandell
• Edgar Allan Poe. 1937
• Rudyard Kipling - A Study in Literature and Political Ideas. 1940

Dramas

• The Beggar's Ride. 1926, drama

Libretti

• Libretto for the opera Dance Dream by Ethel Smyth based on a story by Maurice Baring , world premiere at Repertory Theater Birmingham, June 4, 1923, printed by Vienna, Universal Edition 1923

literature

• Michael Copp: Cambridge poets of the Great War: an anthology . Fairleigh Dickinson Univ. Press, Madison, NJ 2001.
• Robert H. Ross: The Georgian Revolt, 1910-1922: Rise and Fall of a Poetic Ideal. Carbondale: Southern Illinois University Press 1965.
• Louis Untermeyer: Modern British Poetry . Kessinger Publishing, Whitefish, Nont. 2006 (reprint from 1920), p. 219 ff.

Web links

Works by Edward Shanks in separate editions

• Literature by and about Edward Shanks in the WorldCat bibliographic database
• Hilaire Belloc in collaboration with C. Creighton Mandell in the Gutenberg project
• The People of the Ruins in the Gutenberg Australia project
• First Essays on Literature on google.books.de
• Second Essays on Literature on google.books.de
• The Old Soldiers on oldpoetry.com

Works by Edward Shanks in edited volumes

• Georgian Poetry 1918-19 in the Gutenberg project
• Georgian Poetry 1920–22 in the Gutenberg project

Individual evidence

1. ^ The First World War Poetry Digital Archive
2. ^ Jon Silkin: Out of Battle: The Poetry of the Great War . 1972
3. ^ Edward James, Farah Mendlesohn : The Cambridge companion to science fiction . Cambridge University Press, Cambridge 2004, p. 27.
4. ^ Myron Simon: The Georgian poetic . University of California, Berkeley 1975, p. 89.
5. ↑ Timothy Rogers: Georgian poetry 1911-22: the critical heritage . Routledge 1997, p. 414.
6. ^ John D. Gordan: Letters to an Editor: Georgian Poetry . Ayer Publishing 1967, p. 29f.
7. ↑ See also: Martin J. Wiener: English culture and the decline of the industrial spirit, 1850-1980 . Cambridge University Press, Cambridge 2004, p. 50.
8. ^ Example of a review of William Somerset Maugham , London Mercury, XVIII, May 1928, p. 98, in: Anthony Curtis, John Whitehead (eds.): William Somerset Maugham, Routledge 1997, p. 175ff.
9. ↑ Example of a review of Robert Atkins ' Pericles . In: David Skeele: Pericles: critical essays . Routledge 2000, pp. 275ff.
10. ↑ Gerald Roberts: Gerard Manley Hopkins: the critical heritage . Routledge 1996, pp. 102ff.
11. ↑ Quoted from: Janet SK Watson: Fighting different wars: experience, memory, and the First World War in Britain . Cambridge University Press, Cambridge / New York 2004, p. 198.
12. ^ Rosamond McKitterick, Roland Quinault: Edward Gibbon and Empire . Cambridge University Press, Cambridge 2002, p. XXII.
13. ↑ Patrick Parrinder: HG Wells: the critical heritage . Routledge 1997, p. 255.
14. ↑ Sydney Fowler Wright, Brian Stableford (Eds.): Deluge , Wesleyan University Press, Middletown, Conn. 2003, p. XXX.
15. ↑ Martial Rose: Forever Juliet: the life and letters of Gwen Ffrancon-Davies, 1891-1992 , Larks Press, Derham 2003, p. 34.
16. ↑ MUGI Music and Gender on the Internet, research project at the University of Music and Theater Hamburg, project management Prof. Dr. Beatrix Borchard
17. ^ Howard Pollack: George Gershwin: his life and work . University of California Press, Berkeley et al. a. 2006, p. 325.
18. ^ Robin Skelton: The Poetic Pattern . Taylor & Francis 1956, p. 8.
19. ↑ Joy Grant: Harold Monro and the Poetry Bookshop . University of California Press n.d., p. 114.
20. ↑ To the classification; Mark Bould: The Routledge companion to science fiction . Taylor & Francis 2009, p. 195.
21. ↑ John Lucas: The radical twenties: writing, politics, and culture . Rutgers University Press, New Brunswick, NJ 1999, p. 160.
22. ↑ See the symbolic representation: Malcolm Smith: Britain and 1940: history, myth, and popular memory . Routledge 2000, p. 18.
23. ↑ Title page ( Memento of the original from January 2, 2014 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and not yet checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. 
24. ↑ Thomas D. Clareson: SF: The Other Side of Realism . Popular Press 1941, pp.
25. ↑ Edgar Mertner: Kipling, Yes, but, or coping with the past : In: Fritz Willy Schulze, Peter Erlebach, Wolfgang G. Müller, Klaus Reuter (ed.): Historicity and a new beginning in the linguistic work of art: Studies on English philology to honor by Fritz W. Schulze . Gunter Narr Verlag 1981, pp. 201–220, here: p. 204.
26. ^ Brian Murdoch: Fighting songs and warring words: popular lyrics of two world wars . Routledge 1990, p. 249, FN 80.