Editing Joyce Cary

{{Short description|Anglo-Irish writer (1888–1957)}}
{{about|an author|the actress|Joyce Carey|the baseball player|Kid Cary}}
{{EngvarB|date=August 2014}}
{{Use dmy dates|date=August 2014}}
{{More citations needed|date=June 2014}}
{{Lead too short|date=January 2022}}
[[File:Joyce Cary Penguin.jpg|thumb|right|1950s [[Penguin Books|Penguin]] photograph of Joyce Cary]]
'''Arthur Joyce Lunel Cary''' (7 December 1888 – 29 March 1957), known as '''Joyce Cary''', was an [[Anglo-Irish people|Anglo-Irish]] novelist and colonial official.<ref>{{cite web|url=http://www.nndb.com/people/552/000114210|title=Joyce Cary profile at|publisher=Nndb.com|date=14 May 1925|access-date=28 October 2010}}</ref><ref>{{cite web|url=http://www.britannica.com/EBchecked/topic/97634/Joyce-Cary|title=Joyce Cary profile|publisher=Britannica.com|date=29 March 1957|access-date=28 October 2010}}</ref> His most notable novels include ''[[Mister Johnson (novel)|Mister Johnson]]'' and ''[[The Horse's Mouth]]''.

==Early life and education==
Arthur Joyce Lunel Cary was born in 1888 in his grandparents' home, which was above the Belfast Bank on Shipquay Street in [[Derry]] in [[Ulster]], the Northern [[Provinces of Ireland|province]] in [[Ireland]].<ref name=ODNB>{{ODNB|32318|title=Cary, (Arthur) Joyce Lunel (1888–1957)|date=2012|author=Alan Bishop}}</ref> His family had been '[[Plantations of Ireland|Planter]]' landlords in neighbouring [[Inishowen]], a peninsula on the north coast of [[County Donegal]], also in [[Ulster]], since the early years of the [[Plantation of Ulster]] in the early seventeenth century. However, the family had largely lost its Inishowen property on the western shores of [[Lough Foyle]] after the passage of the [[Irish Land Act]] in 1882. The family dispersed and Cary had uncles who served in the frontier [[US Cavalry]] and the Canadian [[North-West Mounted Police]]. Most of the Carys wound up in [[Great Britain]]. Arthur Cary, his father, moved to [[London]] in 1884 and trained as an engineer. He then married Charlotte Joyce, elder daughter of James John Joyce, manager of the Belfast Bank, Derry, in August 1887 and they settled in London.<ref name=ODNB>{{ODNB|32318|title=Cary, (Arthur) Joyce Lunel (1888–1957)|date=2012|author=Alan Bishop}}</ref> His mother died of pneumonia in October 1898.<ref name=ODNB/>

Throughout his childhood, Cary spent many summers at his grandmother's house in the north of Ireland and at Cromwell House in England, home of a great-uncle, which served as a base for all the Cary clan. Some of this upbringing is described in the fictionalised memoir ''A House of Children'' (1941) and the novel ''Castle Corner'' (1938) – i.e., Cary Castle, one of his family's lost properties in [[Inishowen]] in [[Ulster]]. Although Cary remembered his West Ulster childhood with affection and wrote about it with great feeling, he was based in [[England]] for the rest of his life. The feeling of displacement and the idea that life's tranquillity may be disturbed at any moment marked Cary and informs much of his writing. His health was poor as a child. He was subject to asthma, which recurred throughout his life, and was nearly blind in one eye, which caused him to wear a monocle when he was in his twenties. Cary was educated at [[Clifton College]]<ref>"Clifton College Register" Muirhead, J.A.O. ref no 6138: Bristol; J.W Arrowsmith for Old Cliftonian Society; April 1948</ref>  in Bristol, England, where he was a member of Dakyns House. His mother died during this period, leaving him a small legacy which served as his financial base until the 1930s.{{citation needed|date=June 2014}}

In 1906, determined to be an artist, Cary travelled to Paris. Discovering that he needed more technical training, Cary then studied art in Edinburgh. Soon enough, he determined that he could never be more than a third rate painter and decided to apply himself to literature. He published a volume of poems which, by his own later account, was "pretty bad," and then entered [[Trinity College, Oxford]]. There he became friends with fellow student [[John Middleton Murry]] and introduced Murry to Paris on a holiday together. He neglected his studies and graduated from Oxford with a [[British undergraduate degree classification|fourth class degree]].<ref>{{cite book|author=David Scott Kastan|title=The Oxford Encyclopedia of British Literature|volume=1|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=DlMUSz-hiuEC&q=Joyce+Cary+Oxford+fourth+class+degree&pg=PA398|page=398|year=2006|publisher=Oxford University Press|isbn=978-0-195-16921-8}}</ref>

==Nigeria and early writing==
Seeking adventure, in 1912 Cary left for the [[Kingdom of Montenegro]] and served as a [[Red Cross]] orderly during the [[Balkan Wars]].<ref>{{cite web|url=http://www.irelandseye.com/aarticles/history/people/writers/carey.shtm|title=Joyce Cary profile at|publisher=Irelandseye.com|access-date=28 October 2010}}</ref> Cary kept and illustrated a record of his experiences there, ''Memoir of the Bobotes'' (1964), that was not published until after his death.

Returning to Britain the next year, Cary sought a post with an Irish agricultural cooperative scheme, but the project fell through. Dissatisfied and believing that he lacked the education that would provide him with a good position in the [[United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland|United Kingdom]], Cary joined the Nigerian political service. During the [[First World War]], he served with a Nigerian regiment fighting in the German colony of [[Kamerun]]. The short story "Umaru" (1921) describes an incident from this period in which a British officer recognises the common humanity that connects him with his African sergeant.{{citation needed|date=June 2014}}

Cary was wounded at the battle of Mount Mora in 1916. He returned to England on leave and proposed marriage to Gertrude Ogilvie, the sister of a friend, whom he had been courting for years. Three months later, Cary returned to service as a colonial officer, leaving a pregnant Gertrude in England. Cary held several posts in Nigeria including that of the magistrate and executive officer in Borgu. He began his African service as a stereotypical [[district officer]], determined to bring order to the natives, but by the end of his service, he had come to see the Nigerians as individuals with hard lives.{{citation needed|date=June 2014}}

By 1920, Cary was concentrating his energies on providing clean water and roads to connect remote villages with the larger world. A second leave had left Gertrude pregnant with their second child. She begged Cary to retire from the colonial service, so that they could live together in Britain. Cary had thought this impossible for financial reasons, but in 1920, he obtained a literary agent and some of the stories he had written while in Africa were sold to ''[[The Saturday Evening Post]]'', an American magazine, and published under the name ''Thomas Joyce''. This provided Cary with enough incentive to resign from the Nigerian service and he and Gertrude took a house in [[Oxford]] on [[Parks Road]] opposite the [[University Parks]] (now marked with a [[blue plaque]]) for their growing family. They had four sons, including the composer, [[Tristram Cary]], and the civil servant, [[Michael Cary|Sir Michael Cary]].<ref>[https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/obituaries/1904062/Tristram-Cary.html Tristram Cary. Composer acclaimed as the father of electronic music whose output ranged from concert pieces to Doctor Who] [[The Daily Telegraph]], April 25, 2008</ref><ref>{{Cite ODNB|title=Cary, Sir (Arthur Lucius) Michael (1917–1976), civil servant|url=https://www.oxforddnb.com/view/10.1093/ref:odnb/9780198614128.001.0001/odnb-9780198614128-e-30906|access-date=2021-04-06|year = 2004|language=en|doi=10.1093/ref:odnb/30906|isbn = 978-0-19-861412-8}}</ref>

==As a novelist in the 1930s==
Cary worked hard on developing as a writer, but his brief economic success soon ended as the ''Post'' decided that his stories had become too "literary". Cary worked on various novels and a play, but nothing sold, and the family soon had to take in tenants. Their plight worsened when the Depression wiped out the investments that provided them with income and, at one point, the family rented out their house and lived with family members. Finally, in 1932, Cary managed to publish ''Aissa Saved'',<ref name="kuhne">{{cite book|author=Dave Kuhne|title=African Settings in Contemporary American Novels|volume= 193 de Contributions in Afro-American|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=kb8xPFqAFAMC&q=Joyce+Cary+Aissa+Saved+American+Visitor+African+Witch&pg=PA21|page=21|year=1999|publisher=Greenwood Publishing Group|isbn= 978-0-313-31040-9}}</ref> a novel that drew on his Nigerian experience. The book was not particularly successful, but sold more than Cary's next novel, ''An American Visitor'' (1933),<ref name="kuhne"/> even though that book had some critical success. ''The African Witch'' (1936)<ref name="kuhne"/><ref>{{cite book|author=George Woodcock|title=Twentieth Century Fiction|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=fgKwCwAAQBAJ&q=Joyce+Cary+Aissa+Saved+American+Visitor+African+Witch+Johnson&pg=PA136|page=136|year=1983|publisher=Springer|isbn=978-1-349-17066-1}}</ref> did a little better, and the Carys managed to move back into their home.

Although none of Cary's first three novels was particularly successful critically or financially, they are progressively more ambitious and complex. Indeed, ''The African Witch'' (1936) is so rich in incident, character, and thematic possibility that it over-burdens its structure. Cary understood that he needed to find new ways to make the narrative form carry his ideas. [[George Orwell]], on his return from Spain, recommended Cary to the Liberal Book Club, which requested Cary to put together a work outlining his ideas on freedom and liberty, a basic theme in all his novels. It was released as ''Power in Men'' (1939) [not Cary's title], but the publisher seriously cut the manuscript without Cary's approval and he was most unhappy with the book. Now Cary contemplated a trilogy of novels based on his Irish background. ''Castle Corner'' (1938) did not do well and Cary abandoned the idea. After this came one last African novel, ''[[Mister Johnson (novel)|Mister Johnson]]'' (1939), written entirely in the present tense. Although now regarded as one of Cary's best novels, it sold poorly at the time. But ''Charley Is My Darling'' (1940), about displaced young people at the start of World War II, found a wider readership, and the memoir ''A House of Children'' (1941) won the [[James Tait Black Memorial Prize]] for best novel.<ref>[https://www.ed.ac.uk/events/james-tait-black/winners/fiction Winners of the James Tait Black Prize for Fiction, listed by year of publication] ed.ac.uk</ref>

==Final years==
Cary now undertook his great works examining historical and social change in England during his own lifetime. The First Trilogy (''Herself Surprised'', ''To Be a Pilgrim'', and ''[[The Horse's Mouth]]'') finally provided Cary with a reasonable income, and ''[[The Horse's Mouth]]'' remains his most popular novel.<ref>{{Cite journal|last=Kelly|first=Edward H.|date=1971|title=The Meaning of 'The Horse's Mouth.'|journal=Modern Language Studies|volume=1|issue=2|pages=9–11|doi=10.2307/3194254|jstor=3194254}}</ref> Cary's pamphlet ''The Case for African Freedom'' (1941), published by Orwell's [[Searchlight Books]] series, had attracted some interest, and the film director [[Thorold Dickinson]] asked for Cary's help in developing a wartime movie set partly in Africa. In 1943, while writing ''[[The Horse's Mouth]]'', Cary travelled to Africa with a film crew to work on ''Men of Two Worlds''.

Cary travelled to India in 1946 on a second film project with Dickinson, but the struggle against the British for national independence made movie-making impossible, and the project was abandoned. ''The Moonlight'' (1946), a novel about the difficulties of women, ended a long period of intense creativity for Cary. Gertrude was suffering from cancer and his output slowed for a while. Gertrude died as ''A Fearful Joy'' (1949) was being published. Cary was now at the height of his fame and fortune. He began preparing a series of prefatory notes for the re-publication of all his works in a standard edition published by Michael Joseph.

He visited the United States, collaborated on a stage adaptation of ''Mister Johnson'', and was offered an appointment as a [[Order of the British Empire|CBE]], which he refused. Meanwhile, he continued work on the three novels that make up the Second Trilogy (''Prisoner of Grace'', ''Except the Lord'', and ''Not Honour More'').<ref>{{cite book |last=De Breffny |first=Brian |author-link= |date=1983 |title=Ireland: A Cultural Encyclopedia |url= |location=London |publisher=Thames and Hudson |page=56 |isbn=}}</ref> In 1952, Cary had some muscle problems which were originally diagnosed as [[bursitis]], but as more symptoms were noted over the next two years, the diagnosis was changed to that of [[motor neuron disease]] (known as [[Lou Gehrig's disease]] (ALS) in North America), a wasting and gradual paralysis that was terminal.<ref>{{cite book|author=Barbara Fisher|title=Joyce Cary Remembered: In Letters and Interviews by His Family and Others|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=w9s3Kbi4wJ0C&q=Joyce+Cary+motor+neuron+disease&pg=PA248|page=248|year=1988|publisher=Rowman & Littlefield|isbn=978-0-389-20812-9}}</ref> As his physical powers failed, Cary had to have a pen tied to his hand and his arm supported by a rope to write. Finally, he resorted to dictation until unable to speak and then ceased writing for the first time since 1912. His last work, ''The Captive and the Free'' (1959), the first volume of a projected trilogy on religion, was unfinished at his death on 29 March 1957, aged 68.

==Legacy==
[[Image:Joyce Cary plaque, August 2009.JPG|right|thumb|250px|Blue plaque in Bank Place, beside Shipquay Gate, [[Derry]], August 2009]]
He had appointed his close friend [[Winnie Davin]] as his literary executor, and she supervised the transfer of his library to the [[Bodleian Library]], posthumously published some unfinished works, and supported scholars who studied his papers. She also wrote Cary's entry for the ''[[Dictionary of National Biography]]''.<ref name="DNZB Davin">{{DNZB|Davin|Anna|5d8|Winifred Kathleen Joan Davin|17 November 2012}}</ref>

==Selected works==
{{Div col}}
*''Verse'' (as Arthur Cary, 1908)
*''Aissa Saved'' (1932)
*''An American Visitor'' (1933)
*''The African Witch'' (1936)
*''Castle Corner'' (1938)
*''Power in Men'' (1939)
*''[[Mister Johnson (novel)|Mister Johnson]]'' (1939)
*''Charley is My Darling'' (1940)
*''A House of Children'' (1941)
*''Herself Surprised'' (1941)
*''The Case for African Freedom'' (1941)
*''To Be a Pilgrim'' (1942)
*''Process of Real Freedom'' (1943)
*''[[The Horse's Mouth]]'' (1944)
*''Marching Soldier'' (1945)
*''The Moonlight'' (1946)
*''Britain and West Africa'' (1947)
*''The Drunken Sailor: A Ballad-Epic'' (1947)
*''A Fearful Joy'' (1949)
*''Prisoner of Grace'' (1952)
*''Except the Lord'' (1953)
*''Not Honour More'' (1955)
*''The Old Strife at Plant’s'' (1956)
*''Art and Reality'' (1958)
*''The Captive and the Free'' (1959)
*''Spring Song and other Stories'' (1960)
*''The Case for African Freedom, and Other Writings on Africa'' (1962)
*''Memoir of the Bobotes'' (1964)
*''Cock Jarvis: An Unfinished Novel'' (1974)
*''Selected Essays'' (1976), ed. Alan Bishop
{{Div col end}}

==See also==
*[[List of Irish writers]]

==References==
{{reflist}}

==Further reading==
* Tobias Döring. 1996. ''Chinua Achebe und Joyce Cary. Ein postkoloniales Rewriting englischer Afrika-Fiktionen''. Pfaffenweiler, Germany. {{ISBN|978-3825500214}}.
*{{cite magazine |last=Lardner |first=John |date=4 February 1950|title=Art and Roguery by the Thames [review of ''The Horse's Mouth'']|magazine=[[The New Yorker]] |volume=25 |issue=50 |pages=88–90  }}
*{{cite journal |last=Leithauser |first=Brad |date=12 June 1986|title=Out of Exile|journal=[[The New York Review of Books]] |volume=33 |issue=10 |url= http://www.nybooks.com/articles/5091}}[examines much of Cary's work]
*Malcolm Foster ''Joyce Cary: A Biography'', 1968, Boston: Houghton-Mifflin, Boston
*Alan Bishop "Gentleman Rider: a biography of Joyce Cary", 1988, Michael Joseph {{ISBN|0 7181 2330 1}}
* {{cite book |last1=Mahood |first1=M. M. |author-link=Molly Mahood |title=Joyce Cary's Africa |url=https://archive.org/details/joycecarysafrica0000maho |url-access=registration |date=1964 |publisher=Methuen |location=London}}

==External links==
{{wikiquote}}
* {{FadedPage|id=Cary, Joyce|name=Joyce Cary|author=yes}}
* {{cite journal| url=http://www.theparisreview.org/interviews/5071/the-art-of-fiction-no-7-joyce-cary| title=Joyce Cary, The Art of Fiction No. 7| journal=Paris Review (Fall-Winter 1954–1955) | author=John Burrows & Alex Hamilton | year=1954| volume=Fall-Winter 1954-1955| issue=7}}
*[http://www.encyclopedia.com/html/C/Cary-J1oy.asp Brief overview]
*[https://web.archive.org/web/20070927223742/http://www.authortrek.com/joyce_cary_page.html Authortrek resources]
*[https://books.google.com/books?id=40EEAAAAMBAJ&q=joyce+cary&pg=PA105 Google scan of 1957 Life magazine article on Cary's last days]
*[https://www.jstor.org/pss/372106 "Joyce Cary: Master Novelist"], George Steinbrecher, Jr. ''College English'', Vol. 18, No. 8 (May 1957), pp.&nbsp;387–395

===Bibliography===
* {{OL_author}}

{{Authority control}}

{{DEFAULTSORT:Cary, Joyce}}
[[Category:1888 births]]
[[Category:1957 deaths]]
[[Category:19th-century Anglo-Irish people]]
[[Category:20th-century Anglo-Irish people]]
[[Category:Deaths from motor neuron disease in England]]
[[Category:Writers from Derry (city)]]
[[Category:People educated at Clifton College]]
[[Category:Alumni of Trinity College, Oxford]]
[[Category:James Tait Black Memorial Prize recipients]]
[[Category:People from colonial Nigeria]]
[[Category:British expatriates in Nigeria]]
[[Category:20th-century Irish novelists]]