Unafraid of Virginia Woolf: The Friends and Enemies of Roy Campbell

by Joseph Pearce

Roy Campbell (1902-57) led an unquiet life marked by numerous affairs (both real and imagined), brawls (he once attacked Stephen Spender on stage during a poetry recital), and assorted stunts (with the help of Dylan Thomas, he once ate a vase of daffodils in celebration of St. David's Day). It was also marked by numerous scandals, often concerning Campbell's relationship with Virginia Woolf and her Bloomsbury group, about whom he remarked in "The Georgiad": "Hither flock all the crowds whom love has wrecked / Of intellectuals without intellect / And sexless folk whose sexes intersect...."
Capturing the imagination of the English intelligentsia with his romantic background and controversial style, Campbell was acknowledged as one of the finest poets of his generation. Joseph Pearce's biography vividly recounts the story of Campbell's wonderfully romantic life, including his youth in South America, his dangerous sojourn in revolutionary Spain during World War II, the literary friendship he forged with figures such as C. S. Lewis, T. S. Eliot, and the Sitwells, and his and his wife Mary's eventual conversion to Roman Catholicism. In Pearce's judgement, Campbell's poetry was "both perplexing and challenging - yet no more so than the poet himself."

Genres: Biography

470 pages, Paperback

First published December 1, 2001

About the author

Librarian Note: There is more than one author with this name on GR

Joseph Pearce (born 1961) is an English-born writer, and as of 2004 Writer in Residence and Professor of Literature at Ave Maria University in Ave Maria, Florida; previously he had a comparable position, from 2001, at Ave Maria College in Ypsilanti, Michigan. He is known for a number of literary biographies, many of Catholic figures. Formerly aligned with the National Front, a white nationalist political party, he converted to Roman Catholicism in 1989, repudiated his earlier views, and now writes from a Catholic perspective. He is a co-editor of the St. Austin Review and editor-in-chief of Sapientia Press.

Reviews

[Esdaile · Rating 3 out of 5]

This is a readable and enjoyable book. However it is lightweight, just as the subject of the biography was in my opinion a lightweight poet.
Had he not been an outsider in supporting Franco's Spain while almost the entire British literary establishment supported the Republicans, I do not think anyone would remember him today, certainly not the writer of this biography.
Joseph Pearce draws a sympathetic picture of this British ultramontane poet but the sympathy seems to originate in the shared politics and religion of poet and biographer and not in a profound appreciation of the poetry. This biography reinforced my opinion that Roy Campbell is impressive as a man of faith but a third class poet, an example of the kind of "mediocre artist" in Nietzsche's quip (in "Beyond Good and Evil"): "behind a remarkable scholar one finds not infrequently a mediocre man, and behind a mediocre artist quite often- a remarkable man."

[Janet Baker · Rating 5 out of 5]

Another review said Campbell was a lightweight poet, but I encourage the reader to google and read some of his work before you file that judgement away. Everything about his work is rich, and furthermore, a mark of greatness, his topics are no less urgent today, as he covers racism, sin, Faith, love, social classes, in each poem telling it like it is in rhymed songs luxuriant in language. His life too was honest and clean. He went against the crowd, and he suffered for it, and never relented his loyalties to his beliefs, to his wife, to his family, to his Church. I would not say he was a better poet than T.S. Eliot, but I believe the two of them, in heaven, have long known who was the braver. This wonderful biography does him justice, by a biographer whose own background gives him the context to appreciate Campbell.

[Ben Duckworth · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is a very good book on a very great poet and man. The final chapter is painful. From running with Zulu children as a remote doctor's son, to his arrival in England and Oxford, then back and forth from there to his beloved Latin European countries, including a spell in Toledo as the Spanish Civil War broke out and the butchery of the clerisy. His enmities with the progressive Bloomsbury types, often caustically set to verse and his alienation and then resolution with other great literary figures. Until his fateful death arrived as he had lived. Ecce Homo.

Yet now he is barely remembered. An historical crime, effected by his literary assassins who aren't worthy to be spoken in the same breath or one's lifetime. This erasure can be mitigated by spending some time within these pages and by trawling his extensive literary output.

[K · Rating 4 out of 5]

A well researched book that covers the man, his poetry and his relationships. My interest did wane somewhat towards the end simply because I didn’t feel a connection with Campbell’s poetry, but any reader interested in the his work will find it an enjoyable read.

[Evaristo Montero · Rating 5 out of 5]

Un libro que nos introduce en la muy interesante vida de Roy Campbell, uno de los mejores poetas ingleses de la época de entreguerras, siendo a día de hoy casi desconocido, como consecuencia del ostracismo a que se le sometió por tomar partido por el bando nacional en la guerra civil española, a la vista de los crímenes cometidos por los republicanos.
;La acusación queda desmentida por los grandes esfuerzos que tuvo que hacer para incorporarse al ejército británico, en el que participó como sargento en la II WW.
Su vida transcurrió entre Sudáfrica, Inglaterra, Francia, España, (donde se convirtió al catolicismo junto a su familia, lo que supuso un cambio enorme en su vida) y Portugal, donde falleció en accidente de tráfico, vida que oscila entre una vida sin ningún dinero, y épocas que podía llegar a fin de mes sin mayores problemas.
La biografía está bien escrita y presenta una buena descripción del escritor -