Friends of Promise: Cyril Connolly and the World of Horizon - Hardcover

Shelden, Michael

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0060161388 ISBN 13: 9780060161385

Publisher: HarperCollins Publishers, 1989

Synopsis

This original book gives a revealing picture of the extraordinarily talented group of men and women who produced Horizon, the foremost literary review of the 1940s. Published monthly in Bloomsbury, Horizon was a cultural beacon during the dark days of the Second World War; it was brilliantly eclectic and fiercely independent. Its principal editor, Cyril Connolly, regarded the pleasures of life and art as inseparable, cultivating his love of literature with the same intensity that characterized his love of good food and fine wine, and beautiful women. He published in Horizon the best and most influential writers of the period, among them W. H. Auden, T. S. Eliot, Graham Greene, Arthur Koestler, George Orwell, Edith Sitwell, Dylan Thomas, Evelyn Waugh, and many others. The dedicated circle of friends assisting Connolly included Peter Watson, Horizon's sophisticated publisher who supported the magazine generously with money inherited from his millionaire father, and who - as art editor - introduced readers to important new works by such artists as Francis Bacon, Lucian Freud, and Henry Moore. Stephen Spender helped to start the magazine and the staff also included the ambitious Sonia Brownell who eventually married George Orwell, and Lys Lubbock - an engaging, attractive woman who became the business manager, and who lived with Connolly for most of the 1940s. Drawing on interviews and unpublished documents, Michael Shelden provides an intimate account of literary life in a fascinating period of history, skilfully recreating the world of Horizon, and bringing vividly to life the colourful individuals who made the magazine a legend in its time.

About this title

About the Author

Born in 1951, Michael Shelden grew up in the American Middle West. His essays and reviews have appeared in a wide variety of journals and periodicals, including the Times Literary Supplement. Friends of Promise was his first book and he subsequently went on to write acclaimed biographies of Graham Greene and George Orwell.

From Library Journal

During the 1940s, the London-based literary review Horizon introduced a brilliant and eclectic group of European and American writers to war-torn Britain. Amazingly, despite air raids, paper rationing, and the material deprivations of postwar life, Horizon thrived; its monthly issues appeared almost without fail from 1939 to 1949. The review owed its success largely to Cyril Connolly, gifted essayist and well-known bon vivant, under whose imaginative editorship Horizon published works by Auden, Sartre, Orwell, Dylan Thomas, and many others. This absorbing account skillfully re-creates the literary world of the period, focusing on the lives of Connolly and Peter Watson, Horizon's wealthy patron and publisher. Sheldon enlivens his portraits with extensive quotations from letters and personal interviews. Highly recommended for collections strong in 20th-century British literature.
- Christine Stenstrom, New York Law Sch. Lib.
Copyright 1989 Reed Business Information, Inc.

About this edition

• Publisher: HarperCollins Publishers
• Publication date: 1989
• ISBN 10: 0060161388
• ISBN 13: 9780060161385
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 254