Editing Edgell Rickword

{{Short description|English poet, critic, journalist and literary editor}}
{{Use dmy dates|date=August 2021}}
'''John Edgell Rickword''', [[Military Cross|MC]] (22 October 1898 – 15 March 1982) was an English poet, critic, journalist and literary editor. He became one of the leading [[communist]] intellectuals active in the 1930s.

{{Infobox person
| name               = Edgell Rickword
| birth_date         = 22 October 1898
| birth_place        = [[Colchester]], [[Essex]], [[England]]
| death_date         = 15 March 1982
| education          = [[Colchester Royal Grammar School]],<br />[[Pembroke College, Oxford]]
| known_for          = Poetry, communist activism
| party              = [[Communist Party of Great Britain]] (CPGB)
| awards             = [[Military Cross]]
}}

==Early life==
Rickword was born in [[Colchester]], [[Essex]], the fifth and last child of George Rickword, borough librarian, and his wife Mabel, née Prosser. After a [[dame school]], he attended the [[Colchester Royal Grammar School|local grammar school]].<Ref>{{cite ODNB | url=https://www.oxforddnb.com/display/10.1093/ref:odnb/9780198614128.001.0001/odnb-9780198614128-e-40704 | doi=10.1093/ref:odnb/40704 | title=The Oxford Dictionary of National Biography | date=2004 }}</ref> He served in the [[British Army]] in [[World War I]], having joined the [[Artists' Rifles]] in 1916, before being [[Officer (armed forces)|commissioned]] as a [[Temporary gentlemen|temporary]] [[second lieutenant]] in the [[Royal Berkshire Regiment]] in October 1917.<ref>{{London Gazette|issue=30352|page=11023|date=26 October 1917|supp=y}}</ref> Almost exactly a year later, he was awarded the [[Military Cross]] (MC), the citation for which reads:

{{Quote|For conspicuous gallantry and initiative near Dourges on 15th October, 1918. He volunteered to cross the Haute Deule Canal and make a reconnaissance. After crossing the canal at Pont-a-Sault, his presence was discovered by the enemy, who kept him covered with their machine guns. In spite of this he worked his way along the western bank of the canal, and brought back most valuable information, which enabled his company to form a bridgehead.<ref>{{London Gazette|issue=31583|page=12329|date=3 October 1919|supp=y}}</ref><ref name = PN>{{Cite web |url=http://www.poetrymagazines.org.uk/magazine/record.asp?id=1920 |title=''A Conversation with Edgell Rickword'' |access-date=17 September 2004 |archive-date=6 May 2004 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20040506145649/http://www.poetrymagazines.org.uk/magazine/record.asp?id=1920 |url-status=dead }}</ref>}}

He was a published [[war poet]], and collected his early verse in ''Behind the Eyes'' (1921).<ref>{{cite web|url=http://www.english.emory.edu/LostPoets/Rickword.html|title = Trench Poets}}</ref>

On 4 January 1919, Rickword developed an illness that was diagnosed as a "general vascular invasion which had resulted in general septicaemia". His left eye was so badly infected that they thought it necessary to remove it to prevent the infection from spreading to the other eye.

He went up to [[Pembroke College, Oxford]] in 1919, staying only four terms reading French literature, and leaving when he married. Literary friends from this period included mainly other ex-soldiers: [[Anthony Bertram]], [[Edmund Blunden]], [[Vivian de Sola Pinto]], [[A. E. Coppard]], [[Louis Golding]], [[Robert Graves]], [[L. P. Hartley]] and [[Alan Porter]].<ref>Hobday, p. 44.</ref> His work appeared in the ''Oxford Poetry'' 1921 [[anthology]], with Blunden, Golding, Porter, Graves, [[Richard Hughes (writer)|Richard Hughes]] and [[Frank Prewett]].<ref>{{cite web| url = http://www.gnelson.demon.co.uk/oxpoetry/index/ir.html| url-status = dead| archive-url = https://web.archive.org/web/20001017233825/http://www.gnelson.demon.co.uk/oxpoetry/index/ir.html| archive-date = 2000-10-17| title = Oxford Poetry: Index of Contributors: R}}</ref>

==Critic==

He then took up literary work in London. He reviewed for ''[[The Times Literary Supplement]]'', which led to a celebrated review of [[T. S. Eliot]]'s ''[[The Waste Land]]''. [[J. C. Squire]] published him in the ''London Mercury'', and [[Desmond MacCarthy]] as literary editor of the ''[[New Statesman]]'' gave him work.

He started the ''[[Calendar of Modern Letters]]'' literary review, now highly regarded, in March 1925. It lasted until July 1927, assisted by [[Garman sisters#Douglas (1903–1969)|Douglas Garman]] and then [[Bertram Higgins]], and contributions from his cousin [[C. H. Rickword]]. The ''Scrutinies'' books of collected pieces from it were a ''succes d'estime''; the purpose of the publication was a mass killing of the sacred cows of Edwardian literature ([[G. K. Chesterton]], [[John Galsworthy]], [[John Masefield]], [[George Bernard Shaw]], [[H. G. Wells]]).<ref>David Perkins, ''A History of Modern Poetry: From the 1890s to the High Modernist Mode'' (1976), p. 419.</ref> Its undoubted influence as a precursor of later criticism was very marked in the early days of ''[[Scrutiny (journal)|Scrutiny]]'', the magazine founded a few years later by [[F. R. Leavis]] and [[Q. D. Leavis]].<ref>[[Bernard Bergonzi]], "The Calendar of Modern Letters", ''The Yearbook of English Studies'', Vol. 16, Literary Periodicals Special Number (1986), pp. 150–163.</ref> Rickword also wrote for that publication.

==Communist==

He joined the [[Communist Party of Great Britain]] in 1934,<ref>Hobday, p. 153.</ref> and became increasingly active in political work during the period of the [[Spanish Civil War]]; while still writing poetry. He was friendly with [[Randall Swingler]], the 'official' poetry voice of the CPGB, and with [[Jack Lindsay (writer)|Jack Lindsay]], his only real rival as a theoretician. He was closely connected with the leading cultural figures on the hard Left, such as [[Mulk Raj Anand]], [[Ralph Winston Fox]], [[Julius Lipton]], [[A. L. Morton]], [[Sylvia Townsend Warner]] and [[Alick West]]. When [[Lawrence & Wishart]] was created as the official CPGB publishing house, in 1936, Rickword became a director.<ref>Hobday, p. 168.</ref> It was through Rickword that Lawrence & Wishart published [[Nancy Cunard]]'s ''Negro: An Anthology'', though at her own expense.<ref>Anne Chisholm, ''Nancy Cunard: A Biography'' (1979), p. 277.</ref>

At that same period he was a co-founder of the ''[[Left Review]]'', which he edited. His associates included [[James Boswell (artist)|James Boswell]], who was the art editor; they had met around 1929.<ref>{{cite web |url=http://www.jboswell.info/hogarth.html |title=Biography |access-date=2008-11-02 |url-status=dead |archiveurl=https://archive.today/20120908234303/http://www.jboswell.info/hogarth.html |archivedate=8 September 2012 }}</ref><ref>Andy Croft (editor). ''A Weapon in the Struggle'' (1998), p. 29.</ref> ''Left Review'' existed from 1934 to 1938, was set up by Rickword and Douglas Garman, had as writers both CPGB members and notable figures outside the party, and founded Marxist criticism in the UK.<ref>Laura Marcus, Peter Nicholls, ''The Cambridge History of Twentieth-century English Literature'' (2004), p. 387.</ref><ref>M. Keith Booker, ''Encyclopedia of Literature and Politics: Censorship, Revolution, and Writing'' (2005), p. 419.</ref>

Later he became editor of ''Our Time'', the Communist review, from 1944 to 1947, working with [[Arnold Rattenbury]]<ref>{{cite news| url = http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/comment/obituaries/article1906567.ece| title = The Times & The Sunday Times}}{{dead link|date=September 2024|bot=medic}}{{cbignore|bot=medic}}</ref> and [[David Holbrook]]. Rickword had an upbeat view at the time on the possibilities of popular culture and radical politics, and the circulation rose as he broadened the publication's scope from popular political poetry.<ref>Simon Featherstone, ''War Poetry: An Introductory Reader'' (1995), p. 46.</ref> The post-war clique around ''Our Time'', the Salisbury Group (named for a pub), included [[Christopher Hill (historian)|Christopher Hill]], [[Charles Hobday]], Holbrook, Mervyn Jones, Lindsay, Rattenbury, [[Montagu Slater]], Swingler, [[E. P. Thompson]]; and [[Doris Lessing]] joined it.<ref>{{cite web|url=https://www.independent.co.uk/news/obituaries/charles-hobday-6239.html |title=Charles Hobday: Biographer and editor of Edgell Rickword |first=Andy |last=Croft |newspaper=[[The Independent]] |date=15 March 2005 |access-date=2022-03-20}}</ref>

In 1949, writing a preface to [[Christopher Caudwell]]'s ''Further Studies in a Dying Culture,'' Rickword stated that themes of Caudwell's essay is "the unity of thinking and doing, the nullity of either in isolation." Further, Rickword wrote that Caudwell here "reminds us that poetry and art were as essential to his sense of fitness as bread and air."<ref>{{Cite book |last=Caudwell |first=Christopher |title=Further Studies in a Dying Culture |publisher=The Bodley Head |year=1949 |location=London |pages=Preface by Rickword, pages 7 and 11 |language=English}}</ref>

==Works==

*''Behind the Eyes'' (1921) poems
*''[[Arthur Rimbaud|Rimbaud]]: The Boy and the Poet'' (1924)
*''Invocation to Angels'' (1928) poems
*''Scrutinies By Various Writers'' (1928) editor
*''Scrutinies'' Volume II (1931) editor
*''Love One Another'' (1929) Mandrake Press 
*''Poet Under Saturn. The Tragedy of [[Paul Verlaine|Verlaine]]'' by Marcel Coulon (1932) translator 
*''A Handbook of Freedom: A Record of English Democracy Through Twelve Centuries'' (1939) Co-editor with [[Jack Lindsay (writer)|Jack Lindsay]]
*''Collected Poems'' (1947)
*''Radical Squibs and Loyal Ripostes: A Collection of Satirical Pamphlets of the Regency Period 1819-1821'' (1971) editor 
*''Essays and Opinions, vol. 1: 1921-1931'' (1974) edited by [[Alan Young]]
*''Literature and Society. Essays and Opinions, vol.2: 1931-1978'' (1978)
*''Twittingpan and Some Others'' (1981) poems
*''Fifty Poems'', a selection by Edgell Rickword, with introduction by [[Roy Fuller]]

==References==
*'Edgell Rickword, ''Collected Poems''' (1947) review by A. Cheetham, ''The Isis'', 26 May 1948, p.31
*''Edgell Rickword: A Poet at War'' (1989) by [[Charles Hobday]], Carcanet Press
*''Edgell Rickword: No Illusions'' (2007) by [[Michael Copp]], Cecil Woolf

==Notes==
{{Reflist}}

==External links==
*[http://www.poetrymagazines.org.uk/magazine/record.asp?id=10040 The Calendar of Modern Letters, by Malcolm Bradbury] {{Webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20040719151938/http://www.poetrymagazines.org.uk/magazine/record.asp?id=10040 |date=19 July 2004 }}
*[http://www.spartacus-educational.com/SPrickword.htm Biography of Edgell Rickword]
*[http://www.ltmrecordings.com/artistsriflesaudioCD.html Artists Rifles audiobook notes on Rickword]

{{Authority control}}

{{DEFAULTSORT:Rickword, Edgell}}
[[Category:1898 births]]
[[Category:1982 deaths]]
[[Category:British Army personnel of World War I]]
[[Category:English World War I poets]]
[[Category:20th-century English male writers]]
[[Category:English communists]]
[[Category:English essayists]]
[[Category:English male journalists]]
[[Category:English literary critics]]
[[Category:20th-century English poets]]
[[Category:Marxist journalists]]
[[Category:Writers from Colchester]]
[[Category:People educated at Colchester Royal Grammar School]]
[[Category:Alumni of Pembroke College, Oxford]]
[[Category:Royal Berkshire Regiment officers]]
[[Category:Artists' Rifles soldiers]]
[[Category:Recipients of the Military Cross]]
[[Category:Communist writers]]
[[Category:British communist poets]]
[[Category:English male essayists]]
[[Category:English male poets]]
[[Category:20th-century English essayists]]
[[Category:Military personnel from Colchester]]
[[Category:Communist Party of Great Britain members]]