Howard Spring

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Robert Howard Spring (born February 10, 1889 in Cardiff , Wales , † May 3, 1965 in Falmouth , Cornwall ) was a British writer and journalist . In the 1950s and 1960s he was one of the most widely read authors in Great Britain.

education

Howard Spring, his common name, was born the son of the Irish day laborer William Spring, of whom even his wife only knew that he had come to Wales as a youth from the county of Cork . When Howard Spring was 12 years old, his father died, and Howard had to leave the school he had attended until then to help his mother, like his older brother and two sisters, support the large family, including three other siblings, a brother and two sisters, belonged. Howard worked as an errand boy for small business people until he found work as a delivery boy in an accountant's office and then in the editorial office of the South Wales Daily News. Spring was dying to be a reporter , so he learned shorthand and went to night school that Cardiff University had set up. Of the classes offered there, he attended English, French, Latin, mathematics and history. Eventually he became a reporter for the South Wales Daily News.

Journalist and editor

In 1911, Spring left Cardiff and worked for the Yorkshire Observer in Bradford until 1915 . For this newspaper he began to review books and thus lay the basis for his excellent reputation as a literary critic . Due to his small and slim figure, he was unable to join the fighting troops when the First World War broke out . He did, however, find an opportunity to work as a clerk in the Army Service Corps, a utility organization for the Army. Shortly before, he had gone to the "Manchester Guardian" (now The Guardian ), where he returned after the war. There he met his future wife, who later made a name for herself as a writer of books as Marion Howard Spring ( Memories and Gardens , 1965, an autobiography; Howard , 1967, a biography of her husband; Frontispiece , 1970, a volume of memories) .

After serving in the Army Service Corps, Howard Spring was sent to Ireland by the Manchester Guardian in 1919 to report on the spot on the course of the persistent struggle between England and the Irish independence movement . There he gained the experience that was to find its literary expression in his widely translated hit novel My Son, My Son .

The writer

In 1931, after meeting the owner of the newspaper, Lord Beaverbrook , he began working as a reviewer for the London Evening Standard. At the same time, Spring began to write himself. His first book Darkie & Co . appeared in 1932, followed by his first novel Shabby Tiger in 1934 , which was set in Manchester . Soon after, a sequel appeared under the title Rachel Rosing . His first big success came with My Son, My Son (original title O Absalom ), 1938, which was also very successful in the USA and Germany (under the title "Beloved Sons") and was made into a film. In 1977 the film was edited for television (BBC).

The success of his books enabled Howard Spring to move his family to Mylor Church Town in Falmouth, Cornwall . He stayed in Falmouth until his death.

His best-known book, Fame is the Spur , was published in 1940, a Labor leader's path from poor beginnings to power. The novels Hard Facts and Dunkerley’s followed in 1944 and 1946 .

In the following years the novels There is No Armor (1948), The Houses in Between (1951) , A Sunset Touch (1953), These Lovers Fled Away (1955) , Time and the Hour (1957), All appeared in quick succession Day Long (1959), I Met a Lady (1961). There were also the autobiographical volumes Heaven Lies About Us, A Fragment of Infancy (1939), In the Meantime (1942) and And Another Thing (1946).

In addition to his time-consuming work as a novelist, Spring was director of the Falmouth School of Art and President of the Cornish Drama League. The Drama League arranged the famous performances of the Minack Theater on the cliffs near the Lizard , the southernmost point of Great Britain.

In his stylistically and compositionally catchy and often socially critical novels from the world of the industrial areas of Welsh and Northern England, Howard Spring demonstrated his great ability for memorable characterization and his understanding of the human condition.

Works (selection)

Autobiography
  • The autobiography . Collins, London 1972 (content: Heaven lies about us , In the meantime and And another thing ).
Children's books
  • My brother Jack ("Sampson's circus"). Benziger, Zurich 1960 (Benziger-Jugend-Taschenbücher, 29).
  • Uncle Oswald's wonder box ("Tumbledown Dick"). Benziger, Zurich 1972, ISBN 3-545-32047-2 .
Novels
  • The Dunkerleys. Happiness and desires of a family. Novel. ("Dunkerley's"). Scherz, Bern 1947.
  • It started with. Novel. ("Winds of the day"). Claassen, Hamburg 1966.
  • Beloved sons. Novel. ("O Absalom"). Translated by Hans Thomas . Claassen, Hildesheim 1993, ISBN 3-546-00065-X
  • Tides of life. Novel. ("All the days long"). Scherz, Stuttgart 1960
  • The glass dream. Novel. ("The House in between"). Scherz, Bern 1952
  • The house in Cornwall. ("There is no armor"). Parnass, Stuttgart 1952
  • Artists and vagabonds. Novel. ("Shabby Tiger"). Scherz, Munich 1966
  • Life's vanity. Novel. ("These lovers fled away"). Scherz, Stuttgart 1956
  • Love and honor. Novel. ("Fame in the spur"). Claassen & Goverts, Hamburg 1949
  • A song becomes quiet. Novel. ("I met a lady"). Scherz, Stuttgart 1963
  • Rachel Rosing. Novel. ("Rachel Rosing"). Scherz, Munich 1953
  • Fate over you. Roman. ("Hard facts"). Fackel, Olten 1959
  • Tumult of the heart. Novel. ("A sunset touch"). Lichtenberg, Munich 1963 (Lichtenberg paperbacks, 43)
Plays
  • Three plays . Collins, London 1953 (content: Jinny Morgan , The gentle assassin and St. George at the dragon ).

literature

  • Marion H. Spring: Howard . Collins, London 1967.
  • Christoph Werner : The writer Howard Spring and the late capitalist system of Great Britain . Halle 1973 (Univ., Philos. Fac., Diss.).
  • Christoph Werner: The representation of the working class in some Howard Springs novels . In: Journal of English and American Studies . Vol. 24, 1976, pp. 323-329.

Web links

notes

  1. ^ First in German in 1938 by Goverts. Reprint of the Hamburg 1962 edition. Frequent editions, also book clubs
  2. ↑ former title heart without armor
  3. ↑ Reprint d. Issued in Bern 1941
personal data
SURNAME Jump, Howard
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Spring, Robert Howard (full name)
BRIEF DESCRIPTION British writer and journalist
DATE OF BIRTH February 10, 1889
PLACE OF BIRTH Cardiff , Wales
DATE OF DEATH May 3, 1965
Place of death Falmouth (Cornwall)