Christopher Caudwell

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Christopher St John Sprigg (20 October 1907 – 12 February 1937), best known by his pseudonym Christopher Caudwell, was an English Marxist writer, literary critic, intellectual and activist.<ref name=commsdcu/>

LifeEdit

Christopher St John Sprigg was born into a Roman Catholic family,<ref name="commsdcu" /> in Putney, London, on 20 October 1907.<ref>{{#invoke:citation/CS1|citation |CitationClass=web }}</ref> He was educated at the Benedictine Ealing Priory School, but left school at the age of 15 and worked first as a cub reporter at the Yorkshire Observer, where his father was literary editor, and then as editor of British Malaya.<ref name=commsdcu/>

Two years later he founded an aeronautical publishing company with his brother. He also published on automobiles and he designed a infinitely variable gear. He continued scientific studies and published The Crisis of Physics in 1936.<ref name="Poems">Template:Cite book</ref>

Caudwell became interested in Marxism in 1934 and began to study it with "extraordinary intensity". In the summer of 1935, he wrote his first Marxist book entitled Illusion and Reality: A Study of the Sources of Poetry, which was published by Macmillan.<ref name=commsdcu/> Following the completion of his book he joined the Communist Party of Great Britain.<ref name="commsdcu">{{#invoke:citation/CS1|citation |CitationClass=web }}</ref>

Death and legacyEdit

According to the socialist magazine Monthly Review, Caudwell on 12 February 1937 "was killed by fascists in the valley of Jarama during the Spanish Civil War. He died at a machine gun post, guarding the retreat of his comrades in the British Battalion of the International Brigade".<ref name=mr>{{#invoke:citation/CS1|citation |CitationClass=web }}</ref>

The Marxist historian E. P. Thompson wrote of Caudwell, "It is not difficult to see Caudwell as a phenomenon – as an extraordinary shooting-star crossing England’s empirical night – as a premonitory sign of a more sophisticated Marxism whose true annunciation was delayed until the Sixties". The Marxist academic John Bellamy Foster similarly credited Caudwell with "breathtaking intellectual achievements in a brief period of time".<ref name=mr/>

In his 1942 introduction to The Fury of the Living, a collection of poems by John Singer, Hugh MacDiarmid called Caudwell (along with John Cornford, another young writer killed fighting in Spain), one of the "few inspiring exceptions" from the "leftist poets of the comfortable classes".<ref>MacDiarmid, H. (1970). Selected Essays of Hugh MacDiarmid, ed. Duncan Glen, Cape, 1969, p.90</ref>

In 1949, The Bodley Head also published the posthumously discovered manuscript of Further Studies in a Dying Culture, which included a preface by Edgell Rickword. His earlier (1938) book Studies in a Dying Culture, also published by The Bodley Head, was introduced by John Strachey. Both were published posthumously by Monthly Review.<ref>{{#invoke:citation/CS1|citation |CitationClass=web }}</ref> Both books have since been republished. Subsequently, Lawrence and Wishart compiled a selection from these two books and from The Crisis in Physics and published with the title The Concept of Freedom. In 1965, reviewer Raymond Williams picked out what Caudwell has to say about freedom, being as relevant when written as now.<ref>Template:Cite news</ref>

WorksEdit

CriticismEdit

Illusion and Reality: A Study of the Sources of Poetry (1937)
Studies in a Dying Culture (1938)
The Crisis in Physics (1939)
Further Studies in a Dying Culture (1949)
Romance and Realism: A Study in English Bourgeois Literature (1970)
Scenes and Actions (1986)
Culture As Politics: Selected Writings of Christopher Caudwell (Pluto Press, 2017)

PoetryEdit

Poems (1939)
Collected Poems (1986)

Short storiesEdit

Scenes and Actions (1986)
"Death at 8:30"
"The Case of the Jesting Miser" (unpublished)
"The Case of the Misjudged Husband"

NovelsEdit

As Christopher St. John Sprigg:<ref>{{#invoke:citation/CS1|citation |CitationClass=web }}</ref>

The Kingdom of Heaven (1929)
Crime in Kensington/Pass the Body (1933)
Fatality in Fleet Street (1933)
The Perfect Alibi (1934)
Death of an Airman (1934)
The Corpse with the Sunburnt Face (1935)
Death of a Queen (1935)
This My Hand (1936)
The Six Queer Things (1937)

OtherEdit

The Airship: Its Design, History, Operation and Future (1931)
British Airways (1934)

ReferencesEdit

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External linksEdit

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Christopher Caudwell Archive at the Marxists Internet Archive
The Concept of Freedom, collection of thirteen essays by Caudwell from three of his books.
Christopher Caudwell by Helena Sheehan: an extract from Marxism and the Philosophy of Science: A Critical History (Humanities Press: 1985, 1993).
A British Hero - Christopher St.John Sprigg aka Christopher Caudwell by Dr. James Whetter (Lyfrow Trelyspen: 2011).

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