Henry Green
Henry Green was the nom de plume of Henry Vincent Yorke[1] (29 October 1905 – 13 December 1973), an English author best remembered for the novel Loving, which was featured by Time in its list of the "100 Best English-language Novels from 1923 to 2005".[2]
Contents |
[edit] Biography
Green was born near Tewkesbury, Gloucestershire, into an educated family with successful business interests. His father Vincent Wodehouse Yorke- the son of John Reginald Yorke and Sophia Matilda de Tuyll de Serooskerken- was a wealthy landowner and industrialist in Birmingham. His mother, Hon. Maud Evelyn Wyndham, was daughter of the second Baron Leconfield.[3] Green grew up in Gloucestershire and attended Eton College, where he became friends with fellow pupil Anthony Powell[4] and wrote most of his first novel, Blindness. He studied at Oxford University and there began a friendship and literary rivalry with Evelyn Waugh.[4]
Green left Oxford in 1926 without taking a degree[5] and returned to Birmingham to engage in his family business.[3][6] He started by working with the ordinary workers on the factory floor of his family's factory, which produced beer-bottling machines, and later became the managing director there. During this time he gained the experience to write Living, his second novel, which was written during 1927 and 1928.[7] In 1929 he married his second cousin (they were both great-grandchildren of the 1st Baron Leconfield), the Hon. Adelaide Biddulph, also known as 'Dig'. Their son Sebastian was born in 1934.[8] In 1940, Green published Pack My Bag, which he regarded as a nearly-accurate autobiography.[9] During World War II he served as a fireman in the Auxiliary Fire Service[3] and these wartime experiences are echoed in his novel Caught; they were also a strong influence on his subsequent novel, Back. Politically, Green was a rather traditional Tory his entire life.[10]
Green's novels are often described as being, along with those of Virginia Woolf, among the most important works of English modernist literature.[8] In his later years, he became increasingly focused on studies of the Ottoman Empire. He stopped his writing career in 1952, after releasing nine novels and a memoir.[1] In 1993, Surviving, a collection of previously unpublished works, was released, edited by his grandson Matthew Yorke and published by Viking Press.
[edit] Appreciation of Green's writing
In his essay The Genesis of Secrecy, British literary critic Frank Kermode discussed Green's novel Party Going and suggested that behind its realistic surface the book hides a complex network of mythical allusions. This led Kermode to include Green in the Modernist movement, and consider the novelist strongly influenced by T.S. Eliot's idea of a "mythic method".
Green's work has received comparatively little critical attention from academics. One of the few academics engaged with Green's work is Jeremy Treglown, author of Romancing: The Life and Work of Henry Green (Faber and Faber, 2000).
John Updike listed Green as an influence during an interview on the "Charlie Rose Green Room", a feature on Rose's website.[11] Updike also wrote the introduction to an edition of three of Green's novels: 'Living', 'Loving' and 'Party Going'.
In the introduction to his Paris Review interview with Green, Terry Southern notes: "An ancient trade compliment, to an author whose technique is highly developed, has been to call him a 'writer's writer'; Henry Green has been referred to as a 'writer's writer's writer.'"[12]
[edit] Bibliography
- Blindness (1926)
- Living (1929)
- Party Going (1939)
- Pack My Bag (1940)
- Caught (1943)
- Loving (1945)
- Back (1946)
- Concluding (1948)
- Nothing (1950)
- Doting (1952)
- Surviving: The Uncollected Writings of Henry Green (1992)
[edit] References
- ^ a b "All Time 100 Novels". Time. 16 October 2005. http://www.time.com/time/2005/100books/0,24459,loving_living_party_going,00.html.
- ^ "All Time 100 Novels". Time. http://www.time.com/time/2005/100books/the_complete_list.html.
- ^ a b c Molten Treasure (1949)- TIME
- ^ a b Romancing: The Life and Work of Henry Green – Review, Insight on the News
- ^ West Midlands Literary Heritage site
- ^ James Wood on Henry Green | Article |Times Literary Supplement
- ^ Faulks, Sebastian (24 September 2005). "Caught in the web". The Guardian (London). http://books.guardian.co.uk/review/story/0,,1576250,00.html.
- ^ a b Romancing: The Life and Work of Henry Green by Jeremy Treglown, 2000
- ^ http://www.theparisreview.org/media/GREEN.pdf
- ^ The Sewanee Review, Vol. 100, No. 1 (Winter, 1992), pp. 114
- ^ http://www.charlierose.com/view/clip/10516
- ^ http://www.theparisreview.org/interviews/4800/the-art-of-fiction-no-22-henry-green
[edit] External links
 |
This article's use of external links may not follow Wikipedia's policies or guidelines. Please improve this article by removing excessive or inappropriate external links, and converting useful links where appropriate into footnote references. (August 2010) |
- Terry Southern (Summer 1958). "Henry Green, The Art of Fiction No. 22". The Paris Review. http://www.theparisreview.org/interviews/4800/the-art-of-fiction-no-22-henry-green.
- 'Molten Treasure', Time Magazine review of 'Loving', 1949
- 'Henry Green, the last English Modernist' by James Wood, Times Literary Supplement
- 'Caught in the web', Guardian article by Sebastian Faulks, 2005
- West Midlands Literary Heritage site including list of books about Henry Green
- 'Literary Encyclopedia' profile of Henry Green by Elizabeth Barry, University of Warwick
- 'Romancing: The Life and Work of Henry Green', Insight on the News article by Rex Roberts, 2001
- 'Traveling With Class: Language and Politics in the Novels of Henry Green', academic thesis by Joseph Rubin, 2004
- 'Landlocked', a long London Review of Books review of "Romancing: The Life and Work of Henry Green" by Jeremy Treglown, 2000
- 'A complicated business', New Criterion review of 'Romancing: The Life and Work of Henry Green' by Jeremy Treglown
- 'The original and idiosyncratic talent of Henry Green', Independent review of 'Romancing: the life and work of Henry Green' by Jeremy Treglown
- BooksellerWorld list of first UK and US editions
- British Library list of holdings including scholarship on Henry Green
