Derek Stanford FRSL (11 October 1918 – 19 December 2008) was a British writer, known as a biographer, essayist and poet.
Derek Stanford | |
|---|---|
| Born | 11 October 1918 |
| Died | 19 December 2008 (aged 90) Brighton, England |
| Occupation | Writer |
| Nationality | British |
| Alma mater | Latymer Upper School |
| Spouse | Julie Whitby |
Educated at Upper Latymer School, Hammersmith, London, he was a conscientious objector during World War II, serving in the Non-Combatant Corps.[1] He edited Resistance, a poetry magazine of just one issue, with David West in 1946.
For a period in the early 1950s he worked with Muriel Spark on several books, and was a supporter of hers (together with the eccentric poet Hugo Manning, a long-time friend), in the Poetry Society.[2] Stanford described Spark's ousting in Inside the Forties.
Spark convinced him of the talent of Dylan Thomas,[3] and Stanford wrote an early book on Thomas shortly after his death. He is associated with the character Hector Bartlett in Muriel Spark's A Far Cry from Kensington (1988).[4]
Stanford died in 2008, aged 90, in Brighton. His widow is the poet Julie Whitby.
Works
edit- A Romantic Miscellany (1946) editor with John Bayliss
- The Freedom of Poetry: Studies in Contemporary Verse (1947)
- Music for Statues (1948)
- Tribute to Wordsworth: A Miscellany of Opinion for the Centenary of the Poet's Death (1950) editor with Muriel Spark
- Christopher Fry: An Appreciation (1951)
- Christopher Fry Album (1952)
- Emily Brontë: her life and work (1953) with Muriel Spark
- My Best Mary (letters of Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley) (1953) editor with Muriel Spark
- Dylan Thomas: a literary study (1954)
- Letters of John Henry Newman (1957) editor with Muriel Spark
- Fenelon's Letters to Men and Women (1957) editor
- Anne Brontë: Her Life And Work (1959) with Ada Harrison
- John Betjeman – A Study (1961)
- Muriel Spark: a Biographical and Critical Study (1963)
- Concealment and Revelation in T. S. Eliot (1965)
- Poets of the 'Nineties. A Biographical Anthology (1965)
- Prose of the Century (1966)
- The Body Of Love: An Anthology of Erotic Verse from Chaucer to Lawrence (1966) editor
- Aubrey Beardsley's Erotic Universe (1967)
- Short Stories of the 'Nineties: A Biographical Anthology (1968) editor
- Movements in English poetry, 1900–1958 (1969)
- Stephen Spender, Louis MacNeice, Cecil Day-Lewis: a critical essay (1969)
- Critics of the 'Nineties (1970)
- Writing of the 'Nineties: From Wilde to Beerbohm (1971)
- Pre-Raphaelite Writing (1973) editor
- Three Poets of the Rhymers Club: Ernest Dowson, Lionel Johnson, John Davidson (1974)
- Inside the Forties: literary memoirs, 1937–1957 (1977)
- The Memorare Sequence (1977)
- The Weather Within (1978)
- The Traveller Hears the Strange Machine: Selected Poems 1946–1979 (1980)
- The Vision and Death of Aubrey Beardsley (1985)
Notes
edit- ^ Poetry & WW2 : lives of the poets Archived 2008-05-13 at the Wayback Machine
- ^ Ivan Savidge, Hugo Manning: Poet and Humanist (1997), pp.51–3.
- ^ Andrew Lycett, Dylan Thomas: A New Life (2003), p. 303.
- ^ "A Far Cry from Kensington".
External links
edit- Obituary by James Fergusson in The Independent
- Stuart A. Rose Manuscript, Archives, and Rare Book Library, Emory University: Derek Stanford collection, 1938–1979