Overview

The novelist and short story writer Edward Upward (1903-2009) is famous for being the unknown member of the W. H. Auden circle, though was revered by his peers -- Auden, Day Lewis, Isherwood and Spender -- for his intellect, high literary gifts and unswerving political commitment. His lifelong friendship with Christopher Isherwood was forged at school and university, with each regarding the other as the first reader of his work. At Cambridge they invented the bizarre village of Mortmere, which with its combination of reality and fantasy had an important role in shaping the dominant British literary culture of the 1930s. Upward, immortalised as 'Allen Chalmers' in Isherwood's Lions and Shadows, was an early influence on W. H. Auden and author of the influential political novel Journey to the Border, published in 1938 by Leonard and Virginia Woolf. But his writing career faltered while he was devout member of the Communist Party. After leaving the party in 1948 he again wrote novels and short stories until shortly before his death at the age of 105. In this illuminating, meticulously researched biography Peter Stansky tells the fascinating story of Upward's conflict between art and life. At the same time he colourfully provides significant insight into English society during the twentieth century and explores the special nature of English radicalism.

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9781910392843

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Reviews

'[Upward's] unique blending of the past, in art as well as in politics, still has lessons for the future.' - Frank Kermode; 'As a painter of hallucinatory dreamscapes - a kind of prose Magritte - Upward at his finest still has no peer.' - Independent

Author Information

Peter Stansky studied at Yale and Cambridge and completed his Ph.D. at Harvard, where he taught before moving to the University of Stanford, California, becoming the holder of the endowed Frances and Charles Field Chair in History. He has written extensively on modern British culture, particularly on William Morris, George Orwell, the Bloomsbury Group, the London Blitz, as well as on Julian Bell and John Cornford.

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