Poems

by Christopher Caudwell

Christopher Caudwell was the pen-name of Christopher St. John Sprigg, born into a Catholic London family. He started working as a journalist at the age of fifteen. He was soon to become editor of British Malaya. Later on he started running an aeronautics publishing company together with his brother. In addition he wrote poetry, plays, short stories, detective novels, aeronautics textbooks and ghost stories. Also at the same time he read voluminously in philosophy, sociology, history, politics, linguistics, mathematics, economics, physics, biology, neurology, literature, literary criticism and so on. In 1934, he developed a special interest in Marxism, and in the summer of 1935 he wrote Illusion and Reality, a Marxist critique of poetry. After finishing the book he joined the Communist Party, and soon became a dedicated grassroots activist, still continuing his writing, even though none of his works were printed during his lifetime. In December 1936, he left for Spain to join the International Brigade in the anti-fascist struggle against Franco. He soon became a machinegun instructor and editor of the Battalion Wall newspaper. Christopher Caudwell was killed by the fascists in the valley of Jarama February 12th 1937, during his first day of battle. He was last seen firing a machinegun, covering the retreat of his section from a hill about to be taken by the Moors.

Hardcover

First published January 1, 1939

About the author

Christopher Caudwell is the pseudonym of Christopher St. John Sprigg a British Marxist writer, thinker and poet.

He was born into a Roman Catholic family, resident at 53 Montserrat Road, Putney. He was educated at the Benedictine Ealing Priory School, but left school at the age of 15 after his father, Stanhope Sprigg, lost his job as literary editor of the Daily Express. Caudwell moved with his father to Bradford and began work as a reporter for the Yorkshire Observer. He made his way to Marxism and set about rethinking everything in light of it, from poetry to philosophy to physics, later joining the Communist Party of Great Britain in Poplar, London.

In December 1936 he drove an ambulance to Spain and joined the International Brigades there, training as a machine-gunner at Albacete before becoming a machine-gun instructor and group political delegate. He edited a wall newspaper.

He was killed in action on 12 February 1937, the first day of the Battle of the Jarama Valley. His brother, Theodore, had attempted to have Caudwell recalled by the Communist Party of Great Britain by showing its General Secretary, Harry Pollitt, the proofs of Caudwell's book Illusion and Reality. Caudwell's Marxist works were published posthumously. The first was Illusion and Reality (1937), an analysis of poetry.

Caudwell published widely, writing criticism, poetry, short stories and novels. Much of his work was published posthumously.