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P. Wyndham Lewis

Born

in Canada

November 18, 1882

Died

March 07, 1957

Genre

Literature & Fiction

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(Percy) Wyndham Lewis (1882-1957) was a novelist, painter, essayist, polemicist and one of the truly dynamic forces of the early 20th century and a central figure in the history of modernism. He was the founder of Vorticism, the only original movement in 20th century English painting. His Vorticist paintings from 1913 are the first abstract works produced in England, and influenced the development of Suprematism in Russia. Tarr (published in 1918), initiated his career as a satirical novelist, earning the praise of his contemporaries: "the most distinguished living novelist" (T.S. Eliot), "the only English writer who can be compared to Dostoevsky" (Ezra Pound).

After serving as an artillery officer and official war artist during the First Wo (Percy) Wyndham Lewis (1882-1957) was a novelist, painter, essayist, polemicist and one of the truly dynamic forces of the early 20th century and a central figure in the history of modernism. He was the founder of Vorticism, the only original movement in 20th century English painting. His Vorticist paintings from 1913 are the first abstract works produced in England, and influenced the development of Suprematism in Russia. Tarr (published in 1918), initiated his career as a satirical novelist, earning the praise of his contemporaries: "the most distinguished living novelist" (T.S. Eliot), "the only English writer who can be compared to Dostoevsky" (Ezra Pound).

After serving as an artillery officer and official war artist during the First World War, Lewis was unable to revive the avant-garde spirit of Vorticism, though he attempted to do so in a pamphlet advocating the modernisation of London architecture in 1919: The Caliph's Design Architects! Where is your Vortex? Exhibitions of his incisive figurative drawings, cutting-edge abstractions and satirical paintings were not an economic success, and in the early 1920s he devoted himself to study of political theory, anthropology, philosophy and aesthetics, becoming a regular reader in the British Museum Reading Room. The resulting books, such as The Art of Being Ruled (1926), Time and Western Man (1927), The Lion and the Fox: The Role of the Hero in the Plays of Shakespeare (1927) and Paleface: The Philosophy of the Melting-Pot (1929) created a reputation for him as one of the most important - if wayward - of contemporary thinkers.

The satirical The Apes of God (1930) damaged his standing by its attacks on Bloomsbury and other prominent figures in the arts, and the 1931 Hitler, which argued that in contemporary 'emergency conditions' Hitler might provide the best way forward in Germany damaged it yet further. Isolated and largely ignored, and persisting in advocacy of "appeasement," Lewis continued to produce some of his greatest masterpieces of painting and fiction during the remainder of the 1930s, culminating in the great portraits of his wife (1937), T. S. Eliot (1938) and Ezra Pound (1939), and the 1937 novel The Revenge for Love. After visiting Berlin in 1937 he produced books attacking Hitler and anti-semitism but decided to leave England for North America on the outbreak of war, hoping to support himself with portrait-painting. The difficult years he spent there before his return in 1945 are reflected in the 1954 novel, Self Condemned. Lewis went blind in 1951, from the effects of a pituitary tumor. He continued writing fiction and criticism, to renewed acclaim, until his death. He lived to see his visual work honored by a retrospective exhibition at London's Tate Gallery in 1956, and to hear the BBC broadcast dramatisations of his earlier novels and his fantastic trilogy of novels up-dating Dante's Inferno, The Human Age. ...more

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P. Wyndham Lewis’s books

Average rating: 3.63 · 2,139 ratings · 276 reviews · 118 distinct works • Similar authors

	Tarr by P. Wyndham Lewis, Paul O'Keeffe (Editor) 3.37 avg rating — 578 ratings — published 1918 — 2 editions	Error rating book. Refresh and try again. Rate this book Clear rating 1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars
	Blast #1 by P. Wyndham Lewis (Editor), Bradford Morrow (Goodreads Author) (Foreword by) 4.02 avg rating — 260 ratings — published 1914 — 15 editions	Error rating book. Refresh and try again. Rate this book Clear rating 1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars
	The Apes of God by P. Wyndham Lewis, Paul Edwards (Foreword) 3.54 avg rating — 162 ratings — published 1930 — 18 editions	Error rating book. Refresh and try again. Rate this book Clear rating 1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars
	The Revenge for Love 3.53 avg rating — 146 ratings — published 1937 — 14 editions	Error rating book. Refresh and try again. Rate this book Clear rating 1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars
	Self Condemned 3.63 avg rating — 93 ratings — published 1954 — 33 editions	Error rating book. Refresh and try again. Rate this book Clear rating 1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars
	Blast 2 by P. Wyndham Lewis (Editor), Jessie Dismorr, T.S. Eliot 4.09 avg rating — 74 ratings — published 1915 — 5 editions	Error rating book. Refresh and try again. Rate this book Clear rating 1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars
	The Childermass 3.45 avg rating — 84 ratings — published 1928 — 15 editions	Error rating book. Refresh and try again. Rate this book Clear rating 1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars
	Blasting and Bombardiering 3.60 avg rating — 62 ratings — published 1937 — 19 editions	Error rating book. Refresh and try again. Rate this book Clear rating 1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars
	The Art of Being Ruled 3.88 avg rating — 57 ratings — published 1926 — 11 editions	Error rating book. Refresh and try again. Rate this book Clear rating 1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars
	Time and Western Man by P. Wyndham Lewis, Paul Edwards (Editor) 3.84 avg rating — 55 ratings — published 1927 — 14 editions	Error rating book. Refresh and try again. Rate this book Clear rating 1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars

More books by P. Wyndham Lewis…

Series by P. Wyndham Lewis

Blast (2 books)
by

P. Wyndham Lewis (Editor),

Jessie Dismorr,

T.S. Eliot,

Henri Gaudier-Brzeska,

Ford Madox Ford,

Ezra Pound,

Helen Saunders

4.04 avg rating — 334 ratings

The Human Age (3 books)
by

P. Wyndham Lewis

3.63 avg rating — 129 ratings

The Enemy (3 books)
by

P. Wyndham Lewis

4.07 avg rating — 14 ratings

Quotes by P. Wyndham Lewis (?)

“Contradict yourself. In order to live, you must remain broken up.”
― Wyndham Lewis

1147 likes

“What is the good of being an island, if you are not a volcanic island?”
― Wyndham Lewis, Letters

tags: expressing-yourself, self-esteem

18 likes

“Many great writers address audiences who do not exist; to address passionately and sometimes with very great wisdom people who do not exist has this advantage—that there will always be a group of people who, seeing a man shouting apparently at somebody or other, and seeing nobody else in sight, will think it is they who are being addressed.”
― Wyndham Lewis

13 likes

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P. Wyndham Lewis’s Followers (163)

P. Wyndham Lewis

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Series by P. Wyndham Lewis

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Combine Editions
P. Wyndham Lewis’s books