Frank Harris

For other people named Frank Harris, see Frank Harris (disambiguation).

Frank Harris by Alvin Langdon Coburn.

Frank Harris (February 14, 1856 – August 27, 1931) was a Irish-born, naturalized-American author, editor, journalist and publisher, who was friendly with many well-known figures of his day. Though he attracted much attention during his life for his irascible, aggressive personality, editorship of famous periodicals, and friendship with the talented and famous, he is remembered mainly for his multiple-volume memoir My Life and Loves, which was banned in countries around the world for its sexual explicitness.

Life

Frank Harris was born James Thomas Harris in Galway, Ireland, February 14, 1856 of Welsh parents. His father, Thomas Vernon Harris, was a Naval Officer from Fishguard, Pembrokeshire, Wales. At the age of 12 he was sent to Wales to continue his education as a boarder at the Ruabon Grammar School in Denbighshire, a time he was to remember later in My Life and Loves. Harris was unhappy at the school and ran away within a year.

He later invented a card game he called Dirty Banshee. The art on the cards showed satyrs and goddesses coupling variously.

Emigrating to the US in late 1869, he studied at the University of Kansas. In 1878 he married Florence Ruth Adams, who died the following year. Returning to England in 1882, Harris first came to general notice as the editor of a series of London papers including the Evening News, the Fortnightly Review and the Saturday Review, the last-named being the high point of his journalistic career, with H. G. Wells and George Bernard Shaw as regular contributors.

Harris returned to New York during World War I. From 1916 to 1922 he edited the U.S. edition of Pearson's Magazine. Pearson's has been described as "Probably second in fame to The Strand Magazine, which it imitated ... a heavily romantic publication"^{[citation needed]}. Married three times, Harris died in France on August 27, 1931, of a heart attack.

Harris became an American citizen in April, 1921. In 1922 he travelled to Berlin to publish his best-known work, his autobiography My Life and Loves (published in four volumes, 1922–1927). It is notorious for its graphic descriptions of Harris' purported sexual encounters and for its exaggeration of the scope of his adventures and his role in history. A fifth volume, supposedly taken from his notes but of doubtful provenance, was published in 1954, long after his death.

Harris also wrote short stories and novels, two books on Shakespeare, a series of biographical sketches in five volumes under the title Contemporary Portraits and biographies of his friends Oscar Wilde and George Bernard Shaw. His attempts at playwriting were less successful: only Mr. and Mrs. Daventry (1900) (which was based on an idea by Oscar Wilde) was produced on the stage.

Just after his death a biography written by Hugh Kingsmill (pseudonym of Hugh Kingsmill Lunn) was published.

Legacy and cultural references

The "Frank Harris Publishing Company" was founded in New York in the mid-to-late 1920s to promote and distribute his works in America. Esar Levine, whose Harris collection is housed at Princeton University, was one of his employees and disciples.

Portrayal on Stage, Film and Television

Harris appeared as a character in the play Oscar Wilde, written by Leslie & Sewell Stokes, at the Fulton Theatre, New York, 1938, starring Robert Morley in the title role.

The feature film Cowboy (1958) is an adaptation of the semi-autobiographical novel My Reminiscences as a Cowboy. Harris is played by Jack Lemmon.

He is seen as a minor character in The Trials of Oscar Wilde (1960) played by Paul Rogers.

On television, Harris was played by Leonard Rossiter in a 1978 BBC Play of the Week: Fearless Frank, or, Tidbits From The Life Of An Adventurer.

Harris was also featured in an episode of The Edwardians (1972) played by John Bennett.

He is a character in the 1997 Tom Stoppard play The Invention of Love, which deals with the life of A. E. Housman and the Oscar Wilde trials.

He appears as a close friend of Oscar Wilde in the award-winning play by Moisés Kaufman: Gross Indecency: The Three Trials of Oscar Wilde.

He appears in the first episode of the 2001 miniseries The Infinite Worlds of H. G. Wells, rejecting a story from Wells for being too long and too preposterous.

Harris appears as a vampire in Kim Newman's 1992 novel Anno Dracula, as the mentor and vampire sire of one of the novel's main characters.

Bibliography

• The Bomb (1908). His first novel.
• Oscar Wilde, His Life and Confessions (1916).
• My Life and Loves, complete (1922).
• My Reminiscences as a Cowboy, (1930).
• Confessional, (1930. Essays.
• Pantopia: A Novel, (1930).
• Bernard Shaw, (1931)
• The Short Stories of Frank Harris, a Selection (1975). Edited by Elmer Gertz; a representative collection

References

• Frank Harris (1975) by Philippa Pullar.
• Frank Harris (1970) by Robert Brainard Pearsall. New York: Twayne Publishers. In Twayne's English Authors Series. LCC 74-120526, Dewey 828.9/H314p.
• The Playwright and the Pirate, Bernard Shaw and Frank Harris: A Correspondence (1982), edited and with an introduction by Stanley Weintraub. The Pennsylvania State University Press.

External links

• The Fales Library of NYU Guide to the Frank Harris Papers
• Extensive website by Alfred Armstrong
• Works by Frank Harris at Project Gutenberg
• Extended bibliography at ibiblio.com
• Esar Levine's Harris collection at Princeton
• Biographical sketch, Crowley diary quotes
• Frank Harris at the Internet Movie Database
• Frank Harris Collection at the Harry Ransom Center at the University of Texas at Austin
• Frank Harris at Find a Grave