English poet, writer, critic and naturalist (1905?1985)
Geoffrey Grigson
|
---|
|
Born
| Geoffrey Edward Harvey Grigson
(
1905-03-02
)
2 March 1905
Pelynt
,
Cornwall
, England
|
---|
Died
| 25 November 1985
(1985-11-25)
(aged 80)
Broad Town
,
Wiltshire
, England
|
---|
Pen name
| Martin Boldero
|
---|
Occupation
| Poet, essayist, editor, critic, anthologist and naturalist
|
---|
Education
| St John's School
;
St Edmund Hall
,
Oxford
|
---|
Notable awards
| Duff Cooper Prize
|
---|
Children
| 4, inc.
Lionel Grigson
;
Sophie Grigson
|
---|
Relatives
| John Grigson
(brother);
Wilfrid Grigson
(brother);
Giacomo Benedetto
(grandson)
|
---|
Geoffrey Edward Harvey Grigson
(2 March 1905 ? 25 November 1985) was a British poet, writer, editor, critic, exhibition curator, anthologist and naturalist. In the 1930s he was editor of the influential magazine
New Verse
, and went on to produce 13 collections of his own poetry, as well as compiling numerous anthologies, among many published works on subjects including art, travel and the countryside. Grigson exhibited in the
London International Surrealist Exhibition
at
New Burlington Galleries
in 1936,
[1]
and in 1946 co-founded the
Institute of Contemporary Arts
. Grigson's autobiography
The Crest on the Silver
was published in 1950. At various times he was involved in teaching, journalism and broadcasting. Fiercely combative, he made many literary enemies.
[2]
Life and work
[
edit
]
Grigson was born at the vicarage in
Pelynt
,
[3]
a village near
Looe
in
Cornwall
. His childhood in rural Cornwall had a significant influence on his poetry and writing. As a boy, his love of objects of nature (plants, bones and stones) was sparked at the house of family friends at
Polperro
who were painters and amateur naturalists. He was educated at
St John's School
,
Leatherhead
, and at
St Edmund Hall
,
Oxford
.
[3]
Poet and editor
[
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]
After graduating from Oxford University, Grigson took a job at the London office of the
Yorkshire Post
, from where he moved on to become literary editor of the
Morning Post
.
[4]
He first came to prominence in the 1930s as a poet, then as editor from 1933 to 1939 of the poetry magazine
New Verse
.
[5]
Among important works by many influential poets ? notably
Louis MacNeice
,
Stephen Spender
,
Dylan Thomas
,
W. H. Auden
,
Paul Eluard
and Grigson himself ?
New Verse
featured
concrete poetry
by the sculptor
Alberto Giacometti
(translated by
David Gascoyne
) and folk poetry from tribal villages of the Jagdalpur Tahsil district of
Bastar State
,
Chhattisgarh
, transcribed from the
Halbi language
by Grigson's brother
Wilfrid Grigson
. During this period, Grigson published some of his own poetry under the pseudonym Martin Boldero.
[6]
An anthology of poems that appeared in the first 30 issues of
New Verse
was published in hardback by
Faber & Faber
in 1939, and re-published in 1942; the second edition states that the first "came out on the day war was declared".
[7]
During
World War II
, Grigson worked in the editorial department of the
BBC Monitoring
Service at
Wood Norton
near
Evesham
, Worcestershire, and as a talks producer for the
BBC
at
Bristol
.
[8]
[9]
Art curator
[
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]
In 1946, Grigson was one of the founders of the
Institute of Contemporary Arts
(ICA) in London, together with
Roland Penrose
,
Herbert Read
,
Peter Watson
and
Peter Gregory
.
[10]
[11]
In 1951, Grigson curated an exhibition of drawings and watercolours drawn from the
British Council
Collection, which for three decades toured worldwide to 57 art galleries and museums.
[12]
The exhibition consisted of more than 100 works, including those of
John Craxton
,
Barbara Hepworth
,
Augustus John
,
Wyndham Lewis
,
Henry Moore
,
Paul Nash
,
Ben Nicholson
,
John Piper
, and
Graham Sutherland
.
Art critic and author
[
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]
Grigson was a noted critic, reviewer (for the
New York Review of Books
in particular), and compiler of numerous poetry
anthologies
. He published 13 collections of poetry, and wrote on a variety of subjects, including the English countryside,
[13]
[14]
botany
, travel, and especially art ?? with books on
Wyndham Lewis
,
Henry Moore
, and most notably,
Samuel Palmer
.
In 1951, he was General Editor of the 13-volume
About Britain
series of regional guidebooks published by
William Collins
to coincide with the
Festival of Britain
.
[15]
After the repression of the
Hungarian Revolution of 1956
, at the initiative of
Stephen Spender
, Grigson joined a group of British writers and artists who applied for visas to visit dissidents in
Hungary
.
[16]
The visas were refused.
Champion and scholar of Samuel Palmer
[
edit
]
Grigson's
Samuel Palmer: The Visionary Years
(1947), an aptly poetic chronicle of the artist's early life influences and experiences, which contained 68 photo illustrations, introduced to a broad audience the early works of one of England's greatest
Romantic
painters. Grigson's follow-up,
Samuel Palmer's Valley of Vision
(1960), included a selection of the artist's own writings and an additional 48 plates. Both books featured a number of previously unpublished paintings, drawings, and sketches. They established Grigson as the foremost authority on Palmer's revered "
Shoreham
Period", and helped trigger a surge of interest in Palmer's youthful, ecstatic, fantastical depictions (during a time of
post-war
riots
and
Industrial Revolution
) of Nature's abundance, in an idyllic
Kentish
countryside.
[17]
[18]
[19]
[20]
Controversially, these books also caught the attention of famous art forger
Tom Keating
, who used their illustrations as models for a series of Palmer fakes that he did in the 1960s and '70s.
[20]
In 1976, along with Palmer experts from the
Ashmolean
,
Fitzwilliam
,
Tate
, and
British Museums
, Grigson helped
Times
reporter
Geraldine Norman
confirm that 13 suspect Palmers that had come on the
market
over the previous decade were
forgeries
.
[17]
At Keating's 1979 art fraud trial at the
Old Bailey
, in his searing testimony on the credulity of the
Bond Street
art merchants
who bought and sold some of the fake Palmers, contentious art critic
Brian Sewell
referred to a personal letter in Grigson's
The Visionary Years
that made ridiculous a key element of the provenance they had proffered, much to the delight of
Keating's defence barrister
.
[21]
[22]
In the catalogue for a major retrospective held by the
British Museum
and
The Metropolitan Museum of Art
on the bicentenary of Palmer's birth (2005), Colin Harrison, curator at the
Ashmolean Museum
, in his essay on the artist's rediscovery, credited Grigson's 1947 book with effectively establishing a canon of Palmer's early work.
[20]
Final years
[
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]
Grigson was the castaway featured in an edition of
Roy Plomley
's
Desert Island Discs
on
BBC Radio 4
first broadcast on 16 October 1982 (his favourite music track was "She Never Told Her Love" by
Franz Joseph Haydn
, his book choice was
The Oxford English Dictionary
and his luxury item:
pate de foie gras
).
[23]
In 1984, Grigson was interviewed by
Hermione Lee
in an edition of
Channel 4
's
Book Four
.
[24]
Grigson in his later life lived partly in
Wiltshire
, south-west England, and partly in a
cave house
in
Troo
, a
troglodyte
village in the
Loir-et-Cher
departement
in France, which features in his poetry. He died in 1985 in
Broad Town
, Wiltshire, where he is buried in the churchyard of
Christ Church
.
[25]
Family
[
edit
]
Born in 1905, Grigson was the youngest of seven sons of Canon William Shuckforth Grigson (1845?1930), a
Norfolk
clergyman who had settled in
Cornwall
as vicar of
Pelynt
, and Mary Beatrice Boldero, herself the daughter of a clergyman. The inscription on his father's slate headstone in Pelynt Churchyard is the work of
Eric Gill
, 1931.
[26]
Five of Grigson's six brothers died serving in the
First
[27]
[28]
[29]
[30]
and
Second
World Wars,
[31]
[32]
among them
John Grigson
.
[33]
This was one of the highest rates of mortality suffered by any British family during the conflicts of the 20th century.
[34]
Grigson's surviving brother,
Wilfrid Grigson
, was killed in an air crash in 1948 while serving as a post-Partition official in
Pakistan
.
[34]
Geoffrey Grigson's first wife was Frances Franklin Galt
[8]
(who died in 1937 of
tuberculosis
). With her, he founded the poetry magazine
New Verse
. They had one daughter, Caroline (who married designer
Colin Banks
). With his second wife, Berta Emma Kunert, Grigson had two children, Anna and
Lionel Grigson
. Following divorce from his second wife, Grigson married
Jane Grigson
,
nee
McIntire (1928?90). Their daughter is
Sophie Grigson
. Among Grigson's grandchildren is the political scientist
Giacomo Benedetto
.
[35]
Honours and legacy
[
edit
]
Described in 1963 by
G. S. Fraser
as "one of the most important figures in the history of English taste in our time",
[36]
Grigson was awarded the
Duff Cooper Prize
for his 1971 volume of poetry
Discoveries of Bones and Stones
.
[37]
A collection of tributes entitled
Grigson at Eighty
, compiled by R. M. Healey (Cambridge:
Rampant Lions Press
), was published in 1985, the year of his death.
[8]
In 2005, to mark the centenary of Grigson's birth a conference was held at St Edmund Hall, Oxford.
[2]
In 2007,
Pallant House Gallery
in
Chichester
presented the exhibition
Poets in the Landscape: The Romantic Spirit in British Art
. The exhibition explored "the creative links between poetry, the pastoral vision and British art in the work of Romantic artists of the 18th and 19th centuries, and the Neo-Romantic artists of the mid-20th century", with exhibits of Grigson's anthology
The Poet's Eye
, featuring lithographs by
John Craxton
, and copies of
New Verse
.
[38]
In 2017, the
British Museum
presented a major exhibition of British landscape paintings from the century following the death of
J. M. W. Turner
. The exhibition title was "borrowed from the poet and critic Geoffrey Grigson's 1949 collection of essays
Places of the Mind
",
[39]
and, in doing so, "acknowledges how every landscape drawing is a construct of the mind and imagination of its creator".
[40]
Works
[
edit
]
- The Arts To-day
(John Lane The Bodley Head, 1935), editor.
- Several Observations
(
Cresset Press
, 1939), poems.
- Under the Cliff, and Other Poems
(
Routledge
, 1943).
- Henry Moore
(
Penguin
, 1944).
- Visionary Poems and Passages or The Poet's Eye
(Frederick Muller, 1944), editor. Lithographs by
John Craxton
.
- Wild Flowers in Britain
(
William Collins
, 1944).
- The Isles of Scilly and Other Poems
(Routledge, 1946).
- The Mint: a Miscellany of Literature, Art and Criticism
(George Routledge & Sons, 1946).
- Before the Romantics: an Anthology of the Enlightenment
(Routledge & Sons, 1946), editor.
- Samuel Palmer: the Visionary Years
(Kegan Paul, 1947).
- Wild Flowers in Britain
(Collins, 1947).
- John Craxton. Paintings and Drawings
(Horizon, 1948).
- An English Farmhouse and Its Neighbourhood
(Max Parrish, 1948).
- Places of the Mind
(Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1949).
- Poems of John Clare's Madness
(Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1949), editor.
- Poetry of the Present: an Anthology of the 'Thirties and After
(Phoenix House, 1949), editor.
- The Crest on the Silver: an Autobiography
(Cresset Press, 1950).
- The Victorians: an Anthology
(Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1950).
- Flowers of the Meadow
(Penguin Books, 1950).
- Festival of Britain "About Britain" Guides
(Collins, 1951), general editor.
- Thornton's Temple of Flora
(Collins, 1951).
- Essays From the Air: 29 Broadcast Talks
(1951).
- A Master of Our Time: a Study of Wyndham Lewis
(
Methuen
, 1951).
- Gardenage, or the Plants of Ninhursaga
(Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1952).
- Legenda Suecana. Twenty-odd Poems
(printed for the author, 1953)
[41]
- Freedom of the Parish
(Phoenix House, 1954). About Pelynt, Cornwall.
- The Englishman's Flora
(Phoenix House, 1955).
- The Shell Guide to Flowers of the Countryside
(Phoenix House, 1955).
- Painted Caves
(Phoenix House, 1957).
- The Shell Guide to Trees and Shrubs
(Phoenix House, 1958).
- English Villages in Colour
(
Batsford
, 1958).
- The Three Kings: a Christmas Book of Carols, Poems and Pieces
(Gordon Fraser, 1958), editor.
- Looking and Finding
(Phoenix House, 1958; revised edition John Baker, 1970).
- The Shell Guide to Wild Life
(Phoenix House, 1959).
- A Herbal of All Sorts
(Macmillan, 1959).
- The Cherry Tree
(Phoenix House, 1959), poems.
- English Excursions
(Country Life, 1960).
- Samuel Palmer's Valley of Vision
(Phoenix House, 1960).
- The Shell Country Book
(Phoenix House, 1962).
- Poets in Their Pride
(Dent, 1962).
- Gerard Manley Hopkins
(Longmans, Green & Co., 1962).
- Collected Poems 1924?1962
(Phoenix House, 1963).
- O Rare Mankind!
(Phoenix House, 1963).
- The Shell Nature Book
(Phoenix House, 1964).
- Shapes and Stories
, with
Jane Grigson
(Readers Union, 1965).
- The Shell Country Alphabet
(Michael Joseph, 1966; Particular Books, 2009, with introduction by
Sophie Grigson
).
[42]
- William Allingham's Diary
(Centaur Press, 1967).
- A Skull in Salop, and Other Poems
(Macmillan, 1967).
- An Ingestion of Ice Cream and Other Poems
(Macmillan, 1969).
- Shapes and People ? A Book about Pictures
(J. Baker, 1969).
- Poems and Poets
(Macmillan, 1969).
- Notes from an Odd Country
(Macmillan, 1970).
- The Concise Encyclopedia of Modern World Literature
(Hawthorn Books, 1970), editor.
- The Faber Book of Popular Verse
(
Faber & Faber
, 1971), editor.
- Discoveries of Bones and Stones
(Macmillan Poets; Macmillan, 1971).
- Sad Grave of an Imperial Mongoose
(Macmillan, 1973), poems.
- The Faber Book of Love Poems
(Faber & Faber, 1973), editor.
- The Faber Book of Popular Verse
(Faber & Faber, 1973), editor.
- The First Folio
(Poem of the Month Club, 1973).
- The Contrary View: Glimpses of Fudge and Gold
(Macmillan, 1974).
- A Dictionary of English Plant Names (and some products of plants)
(Allen Lane, 1974).
- Angles and Circles and Other Poems
(Gollancz, 1974).
- Britain Observed: the Landscape Through Artists' Eyes
(1975).
- The Penguin Book of Ballads
(Penguin, 1975), editor.
- The Goddess of Love: The Birth, Triumph, Death and Return of Aphrodite
(Quartet, 1978).
- The Faber Book of Epigrams and Epitaphs
(Faber & Faber, 1978), editor.
- The Faber Book of Nonsense Verse: With a Sprinkling of Nonsense Prose
(Faber & Faber, 1979), editor.
- The Oxford Book of Satirical Verse
(Oxford University Press, 1980), editor.
- The Penguin Book of Unrespectable Verse
(Penguin, 1980), editor.
- The Faber Book of Poems and Places
(Faber & Faber, 1980), editor.
- History of Him
(Secker & Warburg, 1980), poems.
- Blessings, Kicks and Curses: a critical collection
(
Allison & Busby
, 1982).
- Collected Poems 1963?1980
(Allison & Busby, 1982).
- The Private Art: a Poetry Notebook
(Allison & Busby, 1982).
- The Cornish Dancer and Other Poems
(Secker & Warburg, 1982).
- Geoffrey Grigson's Countryside
(Ebury Press, 1982).
- Recollections, Mainly of Writers and Artists
(Hogarth Press, 1984).
- The English Year from Diaries and Letters
(Oxford Paperbacks, 1984).
- The Faber Book of Reflective Verse
(Faber & Faber, 1984), editor.
- Country Writings
(Century, 1984).
- Montaigne's Tower and Other Poems
(Secker & Warburg, 1984).
- Persephone's Flowers and Other Poems
(David & Charles, 1986).
References
[
edit
]
- ^
International Surrealist Exhibition
(PDF)
. Women's Printing Society, Ltd. 1936.
OCLC
9735630
.
- ^
a
b
"Geoffrey Grigson"
, St Edmund Hall, University of Oxford.
- ^
a
b
Ousby, Ian
, ed. (1993).
The Cambridge Guide to Literature in English
. Cambridge:
Cambridge University Press
. p.
395
.
ISBN
0-521-44086-6
.
- ^
Caesar, Adrian (1991),
"Geoffrey Grigson's
New Verse
"
, in
Dividing Lines: Poetry, Class, and Ideology in the 1930s
,
Manchester University Press
(pp. 107?121), pp. 109, 111.
- ^
"Geoffrey Grigson"
,
Encyclopædia Britannica
.
- ^
"Correspondence. William Empson and Geoffrey Grigson on climbers, criticism, and the morality of rudeness"
,
Poetry
, January and May 1937. Poetry Foundation.
- ^
Grigson, Geoffrey, ed. (1942).
New Verse ? An Anthology
, London: Faber & Faber, p. 7.
- ^
a
b
c
Symons, Julian
, "Grigson, Geoffrey Edward Harvey (1905?1985)", rev.
Oxford Dictionary of National Biography
,
Oxford University Press
, 2004; online edn, May 2009,
accessed 2 December 2013.
- ^
Matthew Bell,
"The BBC bunker they don't want you to know about"
,
The Independent
, 30 October 2010.
- ^
"History"
, ICA website.
- ^
Barry Miles,
London Calling: A Countercultural History of London since 1945
,
Atlantic Books
, 2010, page 62. “London Calling” states that: “The ICA was founded in 1946 by the artist and critic Roland Penrose, the poet and art critic Herbert Read, (and) the Cornish poet and editor Geoffrey Grigson, and two sponsors: the art collector and benefactor Peter Watson... and Peter Gregory, the owner of Lund Humphries... Penrose, Grigson and Read were the ideas men”.
- ^
"British Drawings and Watercolours of the 20th Century from the Collection of the British Council"
, Visual Arts, British Council.
- ^
Grigson, Geoffrey (1948). Piper, John (ed.).
AN ENGLISH FARMHOUSE AND ITS NEIGHBOURHOOD
(1st ed.). Max Parrish.
- ^
Spalding, Frances
(2009),
John Piper, Myfanwy Piper: Lives in Art
, Oxford University Press, pp. 126?27.
- ^
Richardson, R. C. (2015),
"Cultural Mapping in 1951: The Festival of Britain Regional Guidebooks" (Abstract)
,
Literature and History
24(2): 53?72.
- ^
Letter to
The Times
, 15 November 1956.
- ^
a
b
Norman, Geraldine (16 July 1976). "Authenticity of Palmer drawings is challenged. A question of art: Are thirteen Samuel Palmer drawings brilliant modern forgeries?".
The Times
. pp. 1, 12.
- ^
Grigson, Geoffrey (1947).
Samuel Palmer: The Visionary Years
. London: Kegan Paul. pp. 4, 7, 8, 23?25, 33, 45?48.
- ^
Grigson, Geoffrey (1960).
Samuel Palmer's Valley of Vision
. London: Phoenix House. pp. 1?10.
- ^
a
b
c
Vaughan, William; Barker, Elizabeth E; Harrison, Colin (2005).
Samuel Palmer: Vision and Landscape
. London: The British Museum Press. pp. 60?61.
ISBN
9780714126418
.
- ^
Grigson, Geoffrey (1947).
Samuel Palmer: The Visionary Years
. London: Kegan Paul. p. 119.
- ^
Grant, Thomas (2015).
Jeremy Hutchinson's Case Histories
. London: John Murray. p. 209.
ISBN
9781444799736
.
- ^
Desert Island Discs Castaway Archive
, BBC Radio 4, October 1982.
- ^
"Geoffrey Grigson interview, 1984"
, YouTube.
- ^
"Geoffrey Grigson (1905-1985)"
, The Literary Cemetery.
- ^
Nikolaus Pevsner
(1970),
Cornwall
, Penguin Books, p. 132.
- ^
"Find War Dead ? First World War"
, Commonwealth War Graves Commission (CWGC).
- ^
Grigson, Kenneth Walton, died 20 July 1918 aged 23
. CWGC.
- ^
Grigson, Lionel Henry Shuckforth, died 9 May 1917 aged 19
. CWGC.
- ^
Grigson, Claude Vivian, died 15 October 1918 aged 18
. CWGC.
- ^
"Find War Dead ? Second World War"
, Commonwealth War Graves Commission.
- ^
Grigson, Aubrey Herbert, died 27 April 1942 aged 41
. CWGC.
- ^
Grigson, John William Boldero, died 3 July 1943 aged 50
. CWGC.
- ^
a
b
Archer, Jeremy,
"One Family's Sacrifice ? The Story of the Seven Sons of Canon and Mrs William Shuckforth Grigson"
, The Keep Military Museum,
Dorchester
,
Dorset
.
- ^
Benedetto, Giacomo.
"Giacomo Benedetto"
. Archived from
the original
on 9 July 2018
. Retrieved
29 December
2017
.
- ^
McCulloch, Andrew (19 October 2018).
"Awkward talking | The work of an important, eccentric poet"
.
TLS
. Retrieved
31 May
2024
.
- ^
"Past winners"
Archived
22 December 2020 at the
Wayback Machine
, The Duff Cooper Prize.
- ^
Simon Martin,
Martin Butlin
& Robert Meyrick,
"Poets In The Landscape"
, Pallant House Gallery, 31 March to 10 June 2007.
- ^
Geoffrey Grigson,
Places of the Mind
, London:
Routledge & Kegan Paul
, 1949.
- ^
Kim Sloan
, Jessica Feather,
Anna Gruetzner Robins
, Sam Smiles and Frances Carey (curators),
"Places of the Mind"
, British Museum, 23 February to 28 August 2017.
- ^
"Geoffrey Grigson. Legenda Suecana 1953"
, Bookride, 21 May 2009.
- ^
Hughes, Kathryn
(8 August 2009),
"The Shell Country Alphabet by Geoffrey Grigson: Kathryn Hughes welcomes the reissue of a forthright 1960s guide to touring the countryside"
(review),
The Guardian
.
Further reading
[
edit
]
- Barfoot, C. C., and R. M. Healey (eds),
"My Rebellious and Imperfect Eye": Observing Geoffrey Grigson
, DQR Studies in Literature 33. Amsterdam/New York:
Rodopi
, 2002. (Contains a comprehensive Geoffrey Grigson bibliography.)
ISBN
978-9042013582
- Ostrom, Hans
. "The Mint," in
British Literary Magazines: The Modern Age, 1914?1984
. Ed. Alvin Sullivan. Westport: Greenwood Press, 1986, 264?267. (Grigson edited
The Mint
.)
External links
[
edit
]
- Geoffrey Grigson page
at Faber.
- "Geoffrey Grigson ? alumnus of St Edmund Hall, Oxford".
- Julian Symons, "Grigson, Geoffrey Edward Harvey (1905?1985)",
rev.
Oxford Dictionary of National Biography
, Oxford University Press, 2004; online edn, May 2009, accessed 2 December 2013.
- "Geoffrey Grigson ? Poet, writer, critic, broadcaster, 1905?1985"
at colander.org
- I. Woncewas,
"A Centenary Reconsideration: Thinking About Geoffrey Grigson"
.
Parameter Magazine
.
- "Correspondence. William Empson and Geoffrey Grigson on climbers, criticism, and the morality of rudeness"
, Poetry Foundation.
- "Geoffrey Grigson"
at
My Poetic Side
.
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