Jack Lindsay Explained

Jack Lindsay
Honorific Suffix: FRSL
Birth Name:John Lindsay
Birth Date:1900 10, df=yes
Birth Place:Melbourne, Australia
Death Place:Cambridge, United Kingdom
Genre:Novels, plays, short stories, non-fiction
Movement:Realism
Language:English
Awards:Order of the Badge of Honour (USSR, 1967)
Member of the Order of Australia (Australia, 1981)
Partner:Ann Davies (from 1943,)

John "Jack" Lindsay,, FRSL (20 October 1900 – 8 March 1990) was an Australian-born writer, who from 1926 lived in the United Kingdom, initially in Essex. He was born in Melbourne, but spent his formative years in Brisbane. He was the eldest son of Norman Lindsay and brother of author Philip Lindsay.

Early life

Lindsay was born on 20 October 1900 in Melbourne, Australia.[1] He was educated at Brisbane Grammar School and the University of Queensland under J. L. Michie, from which he graduated with first class honours in Greek and Latin.[2] On 27 October 1922 at the district registrar’s office, Waverton, he married Janet Beaton, granddaughter of W. B. Dalley. He started his literary career in 1923 as a poet with a book Fauns and Ladies, illustrated by his father.[3] In the 1920s he contributed stories and poems to a popular weekly magazine, The Bulletin, as well as editing the literary magazines Vision (with his father Norman) and London Aphrodite.

Lindsay founded, with P. R. Stephensen and John Kirtley, the Fanfrolico Press for fine publishing, initially in North Sydney. He left Australia in 1926, never to return.

In the UK

Lindsay and P.R. Stephensen established two short-lived magazines, Vision and The London Aphrodite, which were published by the Fanfrolico Press in the 1920s.[4] In the 1930s the Fanfrolico Press ceased as a business. Lindsay described that experience later in the autobiographical work Fanfrolico and After (1962). He moved to the left politically, writing for Left Review and joining the Communist Party of Great Britain at the end of the decade, becoming an activist. He started writing novels while living in Cornwall. Lindsay's earliest novels were set in Ancient Greece and the Roman Empire; they included Cressida's First Lover (1931), Rome For Sale and Caesar Is Dead (both 1934).[5] Lindsay's historical fiction also includes 1649: A Novel of a Year (1938), a social realist novel that begins with the execution of Charles I of England and explores the first year of the Republic through the eyes of ordinary citizens. He wrote 1649 as an anti-fascist novel.[6] He collaborated with Edgell Rickword amongst others.

During World War II, Lindsay served in the British Army initially in the Royal Signal Corps. From 1943 he worked for the War Office on theatrical scripts. That year, he began an affair with the actor and activist Ann Davies which was announced as a marriage although Lindsay was still married. Ann was popularly known as Ann Lindsay. Ann died in 1954.[7]

After the war Lindsay lived in Castle Hedingham, becoming the subject of defamation and suppression because of his Communist standpoint.[8] Being a prolific writer, he published 169 books including 38 novels and 25 volumes of translations (from Latin, Greek, Russian, and Polish), as well as art, literary, classical, historical and political studies, biographies and autobiographies written from a Marxist perspective.

Lindsay was a vegetarian all his adult life.

Awards

Lindsay was awarded the Soviet Order of the Badge of Honour in 1967,[9] an Honorary Doctor of Letters by the University of Queensland in 1973. He was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature (1946), the Australian Academy of the Humanities (1982), and appointed a Member of the Order of Australia (1981).[10] [11]

Works

Fanfrolico Press books, as translator, author or editor

Creative Will and the Poetic Image (1927)

To 1929

1930–1939

1940–1949

The Complete Poems (Sylvan Press, 1948). Translator

1950–1959

his Life and Work (1956)

1960–1969

His Life and Work: A Critical Biography (1966)

1970–1979

His Life and Art (1972)

His Life and Work (1978)

1980–1991

His Life and Art (1981)

New Lyrical Ballads (1945)

Edited by Lindsay, Honor Arundel and Maurice Carpenter. Poets included were:

Dai Alexander – Honor Arundel – John Atkins – Maurice Carpenter – Herbert Corby – Leslie Daiken – Idris Davies – Tom Farnol – Alun Lewis – Jack Lindsay – John Manifold – Geoffrey Matthews – David Martin – Frances Mayo – Hubert Nicholson – Harold W. Owen – Paul Potts – John Pudney – Arnold Rattenbury – M. Richardson – Joyce Rowe – Francis Scarfe – John Singe – Randall Swingler – Mike Whittock

See also

External links

Notes and References

  1. Borg . James M. . Lindsay, John [Jack] (1900–1990) . 10.1093/ref:odnb/54683 . 23 September 2004.
  2. http://adb.anu.edu.au/biography/lindsay-john-jack-14177 Gillen, Paul. Lindsay, John (Jack) (1900–1990).
  3. The Oxford Companion to Twentieth-Century Literature in English. Edited by Jenny Stringer. Oxford, New York: Oxford University Press, 1996, reprinted 2004. (p. 393).
  4. John T. Connor. Fanfrolico and After: The Lindsay Aesthetic in the Cultural Cold War. Modernist Cultures. August 2020. 15. 3. 278. 10.3366/mod.2020.0297. 225448083 .
  5. [Michael Cox (novelist)|Michael Cox]
  6. "...the record of anti-Fascist historical novels is...surprisingly long and distinguished. It includes....Jack Lindsay's 1649 (1938)..." Janet Montefiore, Men and Women Writers of the 1930s: The Dangerous Flood of History. London: Routledge, 1996. (p. 142).
  7. 10.1093/ref:odnb/68985. 2004. Borg. James M.. Davies, Ann Lorraine [known as Ann Lindsay].
  8. http://www.humanities.org.au/wp-content/uploads/2017/04/AAH-Obit-Lindsay-1990.pdf Wilding, Michael. Jack Linsay (1900-1990).
  9. http://encyclopedia2.thefreedictionary.com/Jack+Lindsay Lindsay, Jack.
  10. https://www.austlit.edu.au/austlit/page/A12925?mainTabTemplate=agentAwards Jack Lindsay.
  11. https://www.austlit.edu.au/austlit/page/v1191 Member of the Order of Australia (AM).
  12. Book: Adam of a new world. Jack. Lindsay. Hermann. Nitsch. 27 February 2018. London: Nicholson & Watson. Trove.
  13. Book: Gifford, Denis. British Film Catalogue: Two Volume Set - The Fiction Film/The Non-Fiction Film. 1 April 2016. Routledge. Google Books. 9781317740636.

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