Sydney Fowler Wright

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Sydney Fowler Wright (born January 6, 1874 in Smethwick , West Midlands ; died February 25, 1965 in Midhurst , Sussex ) was a British writer and poet, primarily a writer of science fiction , crime (mostly under the pseudonym Sydney Fowler ) and historical novels .

Life

Wright's father was the accountant and Baptist lay preacher Stephen Wright, his mother Emily Gertrude, née Fowler, died in 1882 when he was just 8 years old. Wright attended King Edward's School in Birmingham briefly, then continued his self-taught education and eventually began working as an accountant like his father. In 1895 he married Julia Ellen (Nellie) Ashbarry, with whom he had six children until her death in 1918. In 1920 he married Anastasia Gertrude (Truda) Hancock, with whom he had four more children.

Wright was initially a poet and translator, and he pursued two projects in particular over the decades: On the one hand, translating the entire saga of King Arthur into blank verse . Part of it, Scenes from the Morte d'Arthur , appeared in 1919 under the pseudonym Alan Seymour. In 1940 the work was completed, but the manuscript was destroyed in a flash . Wright started over, but in the end the work was never published. Another major Wright project was the translation of Dante Alighieri's Divine Comedy . The first book ( Inferno ) was published in 1928, the second ( Purgatorio ) in 1954 and the third ( Paradiso ) only posthumously in 2012.

In 1917 Wright was one of the co-founders of the Empire Poetry League , a philanthropic association for the promotion of culture and poetry, of which GK Chesterton belonged , among others . Wright was the supervisor of Merton Press , the publishing house of the Empire Poetry League , there published a whole series of poetry anthologies, and was editor of their magazine Poetry (later as Poetry and the Play ) until 1932 . The Merton Press also published the above-mentioned excerpt from Wright's Arthurian epic, as well as the 1925 novel The Amphibians , in which a time traveler is transported to a distant future, in which humanity has disappeared and the world is inhabited by gentle, telepathic amphibians and a race of giant, cave-dwelling troglodytes.

But this was not Wright's first novel. Deluge , completed in 1920, could not find a publisher for many years. In 1927 Wright self-published the book. It was a great success as a writer, and Wright's only one. The book was also published in the USA and was filmed there in 1933. In the novel, large parts of Europe have sunk into the sea as a result of tectonic uplifts and subsidence, England is only a chain of islands, and what did not sank into the sea was destroyed by a tremendous storm. The survivors, including the lawyer Martin Webster, are now trying to build a new world out of the rubble. In the end, Webster finds other survivors and becomes their leader, a partner is also found, and together they confront the threats emanating from militaristic or criminal groups of other survivors. However, it is not an adventure or love story against an apocalyptic background, but the subject matter is actually the construction of a new social contract and the related moral questions.

Spurred on by Deluge's success , Wright became very productive in the years that followed. In addition to The World Below (1929), a sequel to The Amphibians , and Dawn (1929), a sequel to Deluge , he wrote the novel The Island of Captain Sparrow (1928), as well as short stories, which were included in a first collection in 1932, The New Gods Lead appeared, including the now often reprinted story The Rat , in which a scientist discovers an immortality serum and reflects on whether it is desirable to make people as they are today immortal in their depravity and inadequacy.

Wright was late in concentrating on writing. When his first novel was published, he was already 50 years old. When his contemporaries, HG Wells and William Hope Hodgson, established their reputations as major authors of what is known as Scientific Romance , the British speculative novel, Wright was still working as an accountant. Wright's most productive phase came at a time when this form was already slowly declining and readers' interest in pessimistic visions of the future with a socio-educational claim had long since begun to wane. Wright remained productive, wrote a number of detective novels, one of which was also made into a film ( Three Witnesses , 1935), a biography of Walter Scott , political essays and tracts, and repeatedly had difficulties in finding a publisher for his writings .

In 1940 Wright was hired by the London publisher Hatchard's Bookshop to take care of its Books of Today magazine . Here some of Wright's works appeared in new editions as well as another volume of short stories The Witchfinder (1946). In addition, some of Wright's books - now categorized as science fiction - appeared in the USA and in smaller British publishers.

Wright's productivity declined after World War II and, after his wife's death in 1956, he took turns living with his children. Wright died in 1965 at the age of 91. A number of his works appeared posthumously. Part of his estate is in the holdings of the Rivera Library at the University of California, Riverside .

bibliography

The series are arranged according to the year of publication of the first part.

Amphibians
  • 1 The Amphibians (1925)
  • 2 The World Below (1929, also as The Dwellers , 1954)
  • The World Below (1929, collective edition of 1 and 2)
Deluge
  • Deluge (1927)
  • Dawn (1929)
  • Deluge and Dawn (1975, collective edition of 1 and 2)
The Rat (short stories)
  • The Rat (1929)
    • German: the rat. In: James Gunn (ed.): From Shelley to Clarke. Heyne (Library of Science Fiction Literature # 100), 2000, ISBN 3-453-17104-7 .
  • Whom the Rat Bites (1939)
Inspector Cleveland (crime novels, as Sydney Fowler)
  • By Saturday (1931, also called Dead by Saturday , 2009)
  • Crime & Co. (1931, also called The Hand-Print Mystery , 1932)
  • The Hanging of Constance Hillier (1931)
  • Arresting Delia (1933)
Inspector Combridge and Mr. Jellipot (detective novels, as Sydney Fowler)
  • The Bell Street Murders (1931)
  • The Secret of the Screen (1933)
  • Post-Mortem Evidence (1936)
  • The Attic Murder (1936)
  • Four Callers in Razor Street (1937)
  • The Jordans Murder (1938)
  • The Murder in Bethnal Square (1938)
  • The Wills of Jane Kanwhistle (1939)
  • The Rissole Mystery (1941)
  • Too Much for Mr. Jellipot (1945)
  • With cause enough? (1954)
Margaret Cranleigh
  • Dream, or the Simian Maid (1931)
  • The Vengeance of Gwa (1935, as Anthony Wingrave)
  • Spiders' War (1954)
Alternate World War II
  • 1 Prelude in Prague (1934, also called The War of 1938 )
  • 2 Four Days War (1936)
  • 3 Megiddo's Ridge (1937)
Inspector Cauldron (detective novels, as Sydney Fowler)
  • A Bout with the Mildew Gang (1941, also as The Mildew Gang , 2009)
  • Second Bout with the Mildew Gang (1942, also called The Return of the Mildew Gang , 2009)
  • The End of the Mildew Gang (1944)
Novels
  • The Island of Captain Sparrow (1928)
  • Elfwin (1930)
  • The King Against Anne Bickerton (1930, also as The Case of Anne Bickerton , also as Rex v. Anne Bickerton , 1947, also as Sydney Fowler)
  • Seven Thousand in Israel (1931)
  • Beyond the Rim (1932)
  • The Lord's Right in Languedoc (1933)
  • Power (1933)
  • David (1934, also as David the King: An Historical Novel , 2010)
  • Who Else But She? (1934, also as Black Widow: A Classic Crime Novel , 2009, also as Sydney Fowler)
  • Three Witnesses (1935, also as Sydney Fowler)
  • What Murder Done? (1936, also as Sydney Fowler)
  • The Screaming Lake (1937)
  • The Adventure of Wyndham Smith (1938, also as Wyndham Smith: His Adventures in the 45th Century , 2009)
  • The Hidden Tribe (1938)
  • The Ordeal of Barata: A Political Fantasy (1939)
  • The Siege Of Malta (1942, two parts, completion of the unfinished novel by Walter Scott )
  • Dinner in New York (1943, also as The Capone Caper , 2008)
  • The Adventure of the Blue Room (1945, also as Sydney Fowler)
  • Who Murdered Reynard? (1947)
  • The Last Days of Pompeii: A Redaction (1948, after Edward Bulwer-Lytton)
  • Cortéz: For God and Spain (2010)
  • Inquisitive Angel (2010)
Collections

Stories:

  • The New Gods Lead (1932)
  • Justice; and, The Rat (1945)
  • The Witchfinder (1946)
  • The Throne of Saturn (1949)
  • S. Fowler Wright's Short Stories (1996)
  • The Song of Songs and Other Poems (2009)

Lyric:

  • Scenes from the Morte d'Arthur (1919, as Alan Seymour)
  • Some Songs of Bilitis (1921)
  • The Song of Songs and Other Poems (1925)
  • The Ballad of Elaine (1926)
  • The Riding of Lancelot: A Narrative Poem (1929)
Short stories
  • PN 40 (1929, also as Love in the Year 93 EE , 1982)
  • Automata (1929)
  • Appeal (1932)
  • Brain (1932)
  • Choice (1932)
  • Justice (1932)
  • Proof (1932)
  • Rule (1932)
  • This Night (1932)
  • A Question of EDD (1946)
  • Burglar's Aid (1946)
  • Carrots (1946)
  • Original Sin (1946)
  • Status (1946)
  • The Congo Cat (1946)
  • The Temperature of Gehenna Sue (1946)
  • The Terror of William Stickers (1946)
  • The Witchfinder (1946)
  • Who Else But She? (1946)
  • Obviously Suicide (1951)
  • The Better Choice (1955)
  • First Move (1963)
Translations

Dante Alighieri's Divine Comedy :

  • Dante's Inferno (1928)
  • Dante's Purgatorio (1954, also as Dante's Purgatorio: The Divine Comedy, Book Two , 2012)
  • Dante's Paradiso: The Divine Comedy, Book Three (2012)
Non-fiction
  • Police and Public (1929)
  • The Life of Sir Walter Scott: A Biography (1932)
  • Should We Surrender Colonies? (1939, also as The British Colonies: No Surrender to Nazi Germany!, 2009)
Anthologies (as editor)
  • Voices on the Wind: An Anthology of Contemporary Verse (1922–1924, 3 volumes)
  • Poets of Merseyside: An Anthology of Present-Day Liverpool Poetry (1923)
  • Poems: Chosen by Boys and Girls (1923–1924, 4 volumes, with R. Crompton Rhodes)
  • Birmingham Poetry 1923-24 (1924)
  • From Overseas: An Anthology of Contemporary Dominion and Colonial Verse (1924)
  • Some Yorkshire Poets (1924)
  • A Somerset Anthology of Modern Verse 1924 (1924)
  • The County Series (1927–1930, 13 volumes)

literature

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Sydney Fowler Wright papers in the Online Archive of California, accessed November 13, 2018.
personal data
SURNAME Wright, Sydney Fowler
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Wright, S. Fowler (alternative spelling); Wright, Sydney (alternative spelling); Fowler, Sydney (pseudonym); Rajt, S. Fauler (pseudonym); Seymour, Alan (pen name); Wingrave, Anthony (pseudonym)
BRIEF DESCRIPTION British writer
DATE OF BIRTH January 6, 1874
PLACE OF BIRTH Smethwick , West Midlands
DATE OF DEATH February 25, 1965
Place of death Midhurst , Sussex